


No peace nor rest

by Bearfacedcheek



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Jeronica endgame, Love Triangles, Revenge Sex, bughead!past, not a barchie story, not really a bughead story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-05-03 18:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bearfacedcheek/pseuds/Bearfacedcheek
Summary: They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.Set post 2x08 Betty and Archie enter a relationship, leaving Jughead and Veronica heartbroken and a night of drunken revenge sex morphs into something far more complicated.





	1. A dish served hot

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started out as a bughead fic on FF.net but I fell in love with Jeronica as I wrote and was really enjoying writing that pairing. So, I've decided to scrap the bughead ending and re-write it as Jeronica over here on AO3. I hope you like it. There will be ongoing references to Bughead and Varchie because obviously we are starting out at a point in cannon where those couples were in love but to be clear this is a Jeronica fic

Jughead's POV

 

It started with a glass of whiskey. Or did it? Maybe it started before that, with a reluctant sigh as she took a seat beside him earlier that evening at Pop’s; with his unenthused nod of assent when she’d stood beside the booth and asked tonelessly. “Can I join?”

 

No, he thinks, the chain of events that led him to this - sitting on the edge of her bed pulling his shirt back over his head and looking anywhere other than at the woman lying behind him - started a week ago. The first time Archie publicly put his arm around Betty and he’d seen Veronica’s back go stiff for just a second before she’d laughed melodiously at something Kevin had said, her armour of style and scorn drawn tight around her.

 

He glances back at the bed as he stands, fighting down the building nausea enough to give the shamelessly naked beauty sprawled across it a solemn, regretful, nod. She doesn’t nod back, she just turns away to lie on her side, her back elegant and pale, her hair black and sleek against the pillow.

 

It began, he decides finally as he exits the Pembroke through the back entrance, a week earlier even than that with a characteristic attempt at nobility.

 

_“I know it’s awkward” Archie had said. “And if it’s too weird for you, or for V-“_

_He’d interrupted Archie’s predictable offer to not pursue things with Betty if it would destroy their friendship. Told himself he had no right to jealousy and she every right to happiness._

_“It’s fine man,” his assurance had sounded more brittle than he’d hoped and even Archie, oblivious as he so often is, had read his confliction and frowned._

_“Jug-“_

_“No honestly, it’s fine,” he’d sounded surer that time and surer still as he’d continued. “Just treat her right, Ok? Treat her better than I did”_

 

Yes, that’s when it started, when he’d given his blessing to the budding romance between his best friend and the only girl he’d ever cared about.

 

Then there’d been those few subtle displays of affection between the two that had struck him like a knife in the heart. There’d been those few times in the aftermath his eyes had met Veronica’s and he’d seen his own agony reflect back in their darkness.

 

It had all led to that first glass of whiskey and Veronica’s toast when they’d somehow ended up together in her empty penthouse with a bottle of whiskey and a pile of shared misery between him. “To Barchie!”

 

They’d drunk and she’d poured a second and a third in silence before eventually she’d spoken again. “You know what sucks?” she’s asked and without waiting for answer continued. “We’re not even allowed to be mad. We have to be ok with it”

“We hurt them first,” he hadn’t even tried to sound convincing. Knowing how her feelings mirrored his. That same crawl of jealousy in the throat, that same impotent churn of anger and betrayal in the gut.

 

An hour later and the bottle had been almost gone and he’d listened, with no input offered or required, to Veronica talk their exes’ relationship and their reaction too it round and round in circles until she’d finally tucked her legs up under her and turned to face him where he slouched beside her on the sofa. “I know it’s mean and petty but I just want-“ She’d trailed off with a frustrated sigh, unable to articulate this seething, weeping, anger they live with.

 

“For them to know how it feels?” he’d asked, knowing the answer, feeling the same answer in every spiteful beat of his broken heart.

 

“Yeah,” shame and relief had rung in the hushed tone of her admission and he’d nodded; he knows those feelings well.

 

He’d shrugged, agreeing and commiserating in one languid movement. They have no power to inflict this pain on Betty and Archie, even if they were justified in their tawdry desire to do so. “We wouldn’t even if we could,” he’d told her.

 

“Wouldn’t we?” Veronica had looked at him with dark unreadable eyes that could have been either desperate or venomous. “Couldn’t we?”

 

He’d known of course that he should leave. Her intent had been written in the unnatural alcohol brightness of her eyes and in the tilt of her body towards his. She certainly hadn’t been thinking straight, but then neither had he and the whisky had fed the stupid bitter part of his mind that was whispering that this is how they could take back some shred of control over their foundered hearts.

 

So, he’d kissed her. Kissed her like he’s never kissed anyone before, although his list is admittedly short, he'd kissed her with a clawing desperate anger. Anger at himself for letting Betty go. At Archie for taking his place so easily, as if it were his friend who’d always been meant to stand at her side. At Veronica for dragging him down this path. At Betty, of course at Betty, for moving on so easily when he thinks he never will. For being what he longs for her to be, happy.

 

His first time. It should have been her, bright and innocent Betty. They should have broken this barrier together, awkward and unsure, laughing, maybe, breathless, certainly. Probably making a mess of it together.

 

Instead he had Veronica, worldly and dark, passionate, drunk and vengeful in his arms. He'd taken her without thought, neither knowing nor caring if he got it right, although Veronica’s moaning pants were probably a reliable indicator of success. He’d followed her lead, hard kisses that were more teeth than lips and handfuls of silky dark hair in his fist. Her soft flesh bruising on her hips as he’d gripped her while her nails drew blood down the length of his spine.

 

She’d grunted like an animal in his ear as she came. He imagines that with Archie she never allowed herself to sound so base and the thought had made him hungry for more. To drive her to a place Archie never took her, even if that place is bawdy and licentious.

 

He’d stilled his body and drawn himself back from the point of following her into release. He’d looked away when her hooded eyes had flutter open questioningly and pulled out of her to spin her around so she’d been on her hands and knees with the admittedly perfect curve of her arse enticing him just more than it had repelled him.

 

It should have been Betty and whispered words of love. Instead it had been Veronica on all fours cursing and panting as he’d driven them both into drunken disconsolate ecstasy.


	2. Morning after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Tfanficlover, Creativity19, arianna and UglyxDuckling for the lovely comments and to everyone who clicked the kudos heart of encouragement :-) You guys rock.

Veronica spends the next day in the penthouse nursing the mother of all hangovers. Her head throbs and her belly churns so violently that she’s barely able to rise from the crumpled bed where she’d screwed her best friend’s ex. Her ex’s best friend. 

 

The sheets smell of sex and utilitarian scent of his cheap aftershave and part of her wishes she had the strength to change them and take the first step to burying any reminder of the colossal mistake they’d made in the darkest part of the night when sex and revenge had come together in a hazy alcoholic blur. 

 

Another part, a weak spiteful part, wants to stay surrounded by the evidence that she has a secret that would hurt  _them_ . Betty and Archie have emerged hand-in-hand  and unscathed  from the wreckage of their previous relationships while she and Jughead are still lying bleeding at the crash site. 

 

But she could hurt them now. She can almost see Betty’s huge eyes going wider still with shock and betrayal, the green glistening like sea water with tears. Archie is less easy to predict. Would he swallow down his anger or hurl it at Jughead? She thinks he’d suppress it at first, maybe let it out in moments of snide weakness that she’d treasure for the power they’d bestow on her.

 

It’s a fantasy her spinning mind lingers on between short spells of deep sleep and the occasional trip to the bathroom to retch out the last of the whiskey's poison from her gut. Neither she nor Jughead will ever tell their old lovers what happened between them; their vengeance in the end is as toothless as they’re anger.

 

Last night they traded themselves for the fleeting illusion of not being powerless. This morning they have nothing to show for it but shame, hangovers, and dirty sheets. Tomorrow will be Monday and she’ll have to face Archie and Betty at school. She’ll be ok, she’s been faking her smiles now for weeks, this is just another layer in the charade.

 

She’s glad Jughead’s on the Southside. She wants to forget the whole thing and she suspects he does too, but under the leather jacket and the scowl Jughead is a gentleman and she knows he’d feel obliged to say something. Fortunately, by the time they cross paths again they’ll no doubt all be together in Pop’s playing their given parts.

 

Bett y and Archie, the perfect couple at the centre of their group while she and Jughead provide the ebony contrast that only makes them glow so much brighter. She’ll bring the style and sass, Jughead will bring the biting sardonic wit, and all will be normal and right.

 

“Hey” Betty greets when she gets to school. “You ok V? Feeling better?”

 

Betty is relaxed and natural with her just as she’s been since their conversation a fortnight ago, when Betty  ha d nervously asked how she’d felt about her getting together with Archie.

 

“Betty, it’s fine, Archie and I aren’t an item,” she’d even squeezed Betty’s hand and smiled with wry humour. “Besides I stole him from you first, this is right of return, or something”

 

Betty’d laughed and thanked her and she’d smiled affectionately even through her jealously because in spite of everything she loves her friend as much as she ever loved Archie and Betty’s friendship means more than simply having someone to rely on. It symbolises the better person she’s still determined to become, the person she fell so far short of being when she’d dragged Jughead Jones into her bed.

 

They make their way together to where Archie and Kevin are waiting near their lockers and the four of them loiter around chatting. She fills any and all silences with her usual banter determined that no moment’s awkwardness will arise for the group. In the last two weeks, she thinks she’s told more outrageous stories than in the rest of her life combined.

 

Betty’s laughter dies suddenly on her lips and her eyes go wide and rabbitty. Following their friend’s gaze the group turns as one to see Jughead Jones prowling down the corridor towards them. 

 

“Betty,” Archie whispers urgently but Veronica doesn’t think her friend hears him so stricken is she by the sight of her ex in the last place she’d expected to see him.

 

They’re not the only group watching him. The whole corridor goes silent as he passes by, the usual bitches and blowhards silenced by the unmistakable danger in his gaze and the infamous viper that curls across his back. His eyes flash towards them, a curt nod, and then he’s gone and the corridor erupts into whispered speculation.

 

“Betty,” Archie tries again. “Betty”

 

“You ok?” Veronica asks taken aback by the intensity of Betty’s reaction to Jughead’s unexpected arrival.

 

“Did you know he was coming back?” Betty asks Archie urgently, her green eyes moving erratically in their sockets. “Do you know why he’s back?”

 

“No” 

 

Slowly the blonde’s fists uncurl and she takes an audible breath. “This is good,” she says with determination. “He’s away from the Southside and the Serpents and things can go back to normal.”

 

The bell rings and Betty bolts for class leaving the rest of them to exchange a few worried looks before going their separate ways.

 

It’s Archie that brings her the skinny on Jughead’s return when they have a class together just before lunch. Apparently, it’s all part of FP’s agenda to disentangle his son for the Southside generally and the Serpents particularly and, at least according to Archie, Jughead is ‘pretty pissed’ about it. 

 

She finds Jughead a little while later leaning indolently against her locker in that brooding disinterested way he’s perfected and gives him a hard look. “So, you’re back”

 

“Not by choice” there’s a snarl to his voice that makes her think ‘pretty pissed’ is an understatement. 

 

“Do they know?” he asks without looking at her after a brief pregnant pause. 

 

“No”

 

He relaxes back against the locker looking relieved. “Veronica, I-“

 

“Listen,” she cuts in, “we both want to forget what happened on Saturday night so consider it forgotten. We will never speak of or think of it again. Not even to satisfy my curiosity about who the hell taught you all-“ she loses the thread of her sentence as memories of their night together rise unexpectedly in her mind and her eyes catch on his mouth.

 

They’d been drunk and angry but there’s no denying they’d also been incredibly hot. She’d been surprised by the sureness of his hands on her body and the boldness of his tongue in her mouth not to mention the intensity of the passion with which he’d taken her. He lifts his eyebrows questioningly and runs the nail of his thumb over his own bottom lip which does nothing to distract her from her memories. 

 

Annoyed, she makes a stiff waving gesture with one hand to encompass his whole body and every surprisingly pleasurable thing he’d done to her with it. “All that.” 

 

His frown is perplexed and she rolls her eyes and moves away. “Totally forgotten” she states unequivocally and turns towards the canteen. “Coming?” she throws over her shoulder as she heads to meet the gang for lunch.

 

At lunch Betty is disconcertingly positive. Jughead’s return is ‘great’ she repeats enough times to make the object of her grating enthusiasm visibly clench his jaw. “We’re all together again,” she says with a broad plasticy smile. “Like it’s supposed to be”

 

When they finally head for class she finds herself walking to chemistry with Jughead in awkward silence. 

 

“Well that was exhausting,” she says and his genuine, if rueful, laugh breaks the strained moment.

 

“How long is Junior year again?” he asks with a wry grin. “I’m not sure I’ve got the stamina”

 

She can’t help but give him a wicked look at that. “That wasn’t my experience,” she says before she can stop herself and he gives her a look that only remains annoyed for a few seconds before something bashful hits his eyes and he looks away with a hint of a blush.

 

She laughs and heads to her place near the front, leaving him to slink to somewhere near the back, and for the first time  in weeks she feels something other than crushed beneath the weight of Betty and Archie’s happiness. Maybe, she thinks glancing back over her shoulder at him pulling a text book from his bag, maybe having him back won’t be so bad. Perhaps having someone nearby who’s as miserable as she is will somehow make it easier. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've added a couple of extra tags because I feel like i don't want to mislead anyone about this. This is a Jeronica story but there will be Bughead both past and revisited temporarily later on. The road to Jeronica happy ever after is necessarily complicated and rocky given that in mid season 2 they're both in love with other people. So please don't expect Betty to just go away or for anything to be easy. You have been warned


	3. Therapy under the stairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hey're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and I hope you enjoy the this chapter

**_Jughead's POV_ **

He remains, as he always was, completely out of place in the middle-class complacence of Riverdale High. The only real difference he’s noticed in the week since his return is that the darkness that once made him a target now protects him.

Even the worst of the jocks and the bullies, even the likes of Chuck and Reggie, recognise that the leather clad man who stalks the corridors with the same brooding scowl he always wore is not the same one they used to torment. His darkness goes deeper now, to a place they’re scared to go. It goes south to seedy bars and shady deals. It rides a motorcycle, carries a flick knife and behind it stands dozens of soldiers each armed with the same nihilistic darkness and the same unwavering loyalty to the brand on his shoulder.

So those who once tormented him avoid him. While those he now wishes to avoid torment him. 

“Juggie?” his heart plummets as his new torturer hurries to his side. “Hi,” she beams and he has to fight to answer her broad smile with even the smallest upward turn of his lips. She doesn’t seem to notice. It’s strange, he doesn’t remember her being so oblivious.

“Betts” he greets as neutrally as he can muster. “What’s up?”

“I was thinking,” she clasps her hands together and looks at him excitedly. “You should come back to the paper. The Blue and Gold really needs you voice.”

He doesn’t think she’s being deliberately cruel, but still the cruelty of her offer cuts like a blunt knife in his chest. Why would she ask this of him? Why remind him of how things used to be when it had been them, Betty and Jughead, armed with only their words and their dogged perseverance, taking on the all Riverdale’s demons. Back when the town had been falling apart while they were coming together. Back when they were happy.

“I dunno Betts,” he tries to sound casually regretful rather than full blown devastated and throws in a negligent shrug to complete the illusion. “I’m not sure I have the time, with my novel an-”

“You always have time to write Juggie,” she butts in and the nickname which has always been hers alone for him makes him desperate to get away from her and the painful memories of everything he gave up when he pushed her away.

He says the one thing he’s sure will make her drop this. “I have other priorities now, Betty”

She swallows and for a brief second her expression is something other than a perfect mask of happiness and her eyes swim with distress. “The Serpents?” she asks softly.

“Honestly,” he looks away briefly and then back to her troubled eyes. “Yes”

She looks poised to turn tail and he’s already thinking how hollow a victory it is when her expression shifts again and her hands clamp into tight balls at her side. “That’s fine Jug I understand. Just promise me you’ll come and hang out down there with me sometimes. I could really use your input now and then, even if you haven’t got time to report.”

“Bet-“

“I mean we’re friends, right?” she interrupts in the way she does when she’s not willing to hear a painful truth. “There’s no reason not to spend time together” 

“Yeah,” he says in spite of the  _no, no, no_  that’s hammering in his brain at the thought of having to be alone with her and not with her. “Sure.”

She beams. Giving him, for first time since he came back to Riverdale High, a truly genuine smile that hits her eyes and melts his heart. She’s happy, he reminds himself. The hurt he caused her is healed and he should be - no, he is – glad.

Betty reaches forward and squeezes his bicep, her hand lingering long enough for its heat to seep through his shirt and warm his skin.  _God Betty,_ he thinks in the moment she touches him.  _Please don’t let go._

He goes to the Blue and Gold office straight after his last class the next day despite the deafening clanging of warning bells in his head. He goes because Betty asked him to and he’s still as incapable of denying her anything as he ever was. He goes because he has missed writing for the paper. But mostly he goes because a small masochistic part of him just wants to be near her.

She’s so pleased to see him that he can’t help but feel lifted by her enthusiastic greeting, by the way her hand finds his shoulder, lingering again as if she doesn’t want to let him go. It’s more than stupid to dwell on these brief meaningless moments. It’s also traitorous. Archie is his best friend and Betty’s first love. To nurture fantasies of a reconciliation with the girl he gave up is a betrayal of both of them and of the happiness they’ve found in each other. The happiness he practically ordered Archie to give her.

Betty leans over his shoulder as they work and her breath when she asks for his opinion warms his neck. She reaches across him to make little changes and flashes small smiles his way so that his heart hammers almost painfully at her nearness. When he moves to leave, her hand is on his arm again and this time he’s bold enough to reciprocate. He turns his hand so his palm is face up cradling the underside of her forearm while hers grips the bare skin below his elbow.

“Thanks for coming Juggie,” she says and he’s not sure if he’s imagining it but he’d swear her thumb just started turning circles against his skin but he daren’t look away from her eyes in case that somehow makes her let him go. “I’ll see you tomorrow”

He nods but he doesn’t release her and she doesn’t let go either. Neither have anything to say, they just stand there in the quiet emptiness of the school holding on to one another and staring into each others’ eyes.

“Be-“, “Ju-“

Her phone rings, it brash jingle startlingly loud over their hushed voices and they break quickly apart. His heart pounds with guilt and disappointment as she answers with a smile in her voice. “Hey Archie”

Whatever signals he imagined she gave him that evening in the Blue and Gold he quickly realises he misread. In the days that follow she returns to her bright bubbly and slightly distant self and with his return quickly becoming last week’s news and the Black Hood gone their awkward little friendship group settles into a predictable routine of free periods in the student lounge and lunch breaks in the warmth of the canteen. It’s not as agonisingly uncomfortable as he’d have imagined, mainly due to Veronica’s Oscar worthy acting skills.

If he hadn’t possessed first-hand knowledge of the depth of her heartache he’d believe that she’s genuinely fine with Betty and Archie being together. She jokes and smiles so convincingly that even he barely notices the cracks across her gaze when the couple indulge in one of the mercifully rare moments of public affection that he knows wrench Veronica’s heart as brutally as they do his.

He sometimes feels like a vampire, sucking silently on Veronica’s strength. Like some invisible parasite from a low budget sci-fi movie. He follows her lead, apes her acceptance, and hides in the shadows cast by the burning neon of her performance.

The day he sees her break he feels he can’t deny her the right to take some of that strength back from him.

It’s pure chance that they’re together when they see  _them_. Kicked out of chemistry early and heading to the student lounge to find the gang. Instead they find just Betty and Archie alone on the worn sofa, one of her legs hooked over both of his, his hands in her hair as they kiss.

For a few long deafening beats of his heart he just watches them with a feeling of paralysing numbness, then he hears Veronica’s barely audible sob and the scuffle of her heels as she flees. She’s desperately trying to hold herself together in the corridor when he catches up with her and he knows Veronica well enough to know that a pubic breakdown would be a humiliation she couldn’t bear. So, he grabs her arm and drags her, unnoticed, into the cupboard under the stairs that he’d once called home and has kept as a bolt hole ever since.

“Shit,” she’s uncharacteristically crass as she pulls a tissue from her handbag and dabs at her heavily made up eyes. “I’ve never seen them like that. It just-fuck”

“Hey,” he rubs her arm in a clumsy attempt at comfort and she bites down hard on her claret painted lips. He understands her distress. It’s only today, catching Betty and Archie unawares, have they realised how much of their intimacy the couple have been hiding from them. The lip-locked truth is difficult to accept.

Veronica’s eyes when they meet his are full of salt water and a pain and he realises that at this moment the well of strength he’d thought inexhaustible has run dry. She holds his gaze for a split second and then she comes at him with grasping hands and hungry lips and he doesn’t hesitate in offering up some of the strength he’s leeched from her in the only way she’ll allow.

She fumbles with his belt and he pushes up her skirt and takes her down in one smooth movement to the dusty sheetless mattress that still lies against the wall. He peppers kisses on her face to taste the salt of her tears and drink in the physical evidence of what he already knows. That she and he are mirrored hearts broken down exactly the same fault line.

"Christ," he gasps as she roughly wriggles a hand down the front of his open jeans and grips his already painfully hard cock. “Veronica”

She’s wearing a figure hugging dress that inhibits his access to her body. Squeezing her breasts through her dress and bra he can’t feel the softness he remembers like a pin point of clarity in the hazy hungover memories of his night with her in the Pembrooke.

He wishes there was time to strip it from her body, but she’s already freeing him from his jeans and pressing her hips up urgently against his. Her skirt is up around her middle exposing her her black lace panties and matching garter belt. He swears under his breath at the sight and skims a hand up the inside of her thigh reveling in the feeling of nylon giving way to silky flesh and higher still to the wet satin of her panties.

“Tell me” he demands in her ear as he pushes the fabric aside and ghosts a finger over her. He’s surprised at how deep and husky his own voice sounds and at how her body trembles in response.

“I need you,” her voice is different too, breathy and girlish. Her usual self-assurance fallen away before her need. “Christ Jughead I need you to fuck me”

If he were feeling any hesitancy at being with her again, and honestly, with her covered breast in one hand and her naked pussy in the other, he really isn’t, then his name woven into her entreaty would have been enough to convince him.

Veronica’s tugging insistently at his hips and at his hair demanding he give himself to her. So, he does. He slides past her dislodged panties and into her body with a grunt of approval at finding her as heavenly as he remembers, impossibly warm and tight around him. The noise she makes in his ear as he draws back, the helplessness of her moan, is a sound connected directly to his hips which slam back into her in response.

The rhythm they find is fast and frantic but perfectly in sync for all its urgency. She meets his thrusts with her own, urging him on with a breathless stream of praise and demand. When her words turn profane and her volume rises he knows she’s close. He slams a hand over her mouth to silence her and her wide indignant eyes as she cums with his name a passionate rebuke against his palm are the sexiest thing he’s ever seem.

Afterwards as they straighten the clothes they hadn’t bothered to remove and Veronica finger combs out her tangled hair she tells him they shouldn’t do this again. “Absolutely” he says instilling his still hoarse voice with as much conviction as he can muster.

Their second tryst was, in its own hurried and vulgar way, just as good as their first. He may have no frame of reference but he’s aware that they do have great sex. He can tell from the way her body writhes beneath his and how she keens in her throat as she spasms around him. He can tell from the way his own skin burns at her touch and the lack of control he has over the surge of his hips as she begins to fall apart with his name muffled by the clamp of his hand over her mouth.

Great as it is she's right that they should stop. The comfort of her eager body and needy kisses is an illusion, a mirage conjured out of her flawless beauty and aching heart. A phantasm of his own creation inhabiting an impossible world where they could be more than this; more than the desperate grind of flesh on flesh. 

They last only three more days before they’re screwing in the cupboard under the stairs again. This time with her above him, her hands pressed painfully against his bruised ribs as she rides him, the pain and pleasure she offers driving out the self-loathing that had settled in his stomach after the row he’d had earlier with Betty Cooper.

Betty had been alone at her locker when he’d slunk, late, into school that morning with purple painted on his cheekbone and his lips swollen and split.

“Oh my God Juggie,” her concern had come in a genuine rush and she’d been instantly at his side, fingers reaching gently for his wounds. “What happened? You’re hurt”

“I’m fine,” he’d said and the movement had forced fresh blood from the split in his tender lips.

“You’re not fine,” she’d told him with uncompromising compassion. “Come with me”

She’d dragged him to the disabled bathroom and locked the door.

“Betty I’m fine,” he’d insisted but she’d ignored him and he’d leant him back against the sink as she’d busied herself dampening a tissue so she could clean the blood from his mouth.

Her hands had lingered tenderly on his face and her eyes had been deep emerald wells of almost unbearable concern. “What happened Jug?” she’d whispered, and then more strongly. “And do not tell me you fell off your bike”

“We got rid of Penny. Finally.” he’d admitted reluctantly. “Me and the younger Serpents took on her thugs and dumped her out in Greendale.”

“My God Jug what were you thinking? You could have been really hurt.” Her hands had moved as she’d spoken to run over his arms and back up and down his chest checking lightly for damage and finding it in his wince as she’d brushed his ribs.

She’d tried to lift his t-shirt but he’d stopped her, taking both her hands in his. “I’m ok.”

Her eyes had bored into his, searching and doubtful. “Is Penny? Did you do something to her? Did you hurt her?”

He hadn’t been able to answer, the feeling of Penny’s skin slicing below the razor-sharp blade of his flick knife too vivid in his memory.

The tacit admission had brought tears to Betty’s eyes and she’d shaken her head in disappointment. “Jug”

“She’ll live,” he’d defended himself lowly bristling under her judgmental gaze. “She’s gone and my dad and the rest of the Serpents are safe”

“Is this what you joined them for Jug?” he’d tried to look away but she’d grabbed his bruised face gently and held his eyes. “How long till you’re mixed up in something you don’t walk away from, or someone else doesn’t? Is this want you want? Because that’s what being with the Serpents means”

“They’re all I have,” his voice had been little more than a hoarse croak and she’d shaken her head the water in her eyes catching the light and making his own eyes fill in response.

“You had me Jughead, and Archie and Mr Andrews. What do they give you we couldn’t?” her expression had broken his heart, she’d looked so unsure, so very, very, sad. “That I couldn’t?”

He hadn’t had an answer, all the ones he’d been able to bring to mind, he’d known she could counter she’d offered too.

“Tell me” she’d pressed and the answer had come through his brain and out of his mouth before he’d been able to assess the wisdom of sharing it.

“Permanence,” he’d said simply. “They’ll always be there for me”

She’d looked unbearable hurt then as she’d bitten her lower lip. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He’d known he should leave it and walk away. But the truth is he’s hurt and hurt people make bad decisions when it comes to keeping their mouths shut. “It means I’ll always have a place with them, no matter what better alternatives come along”

Anger had hit her eyes at the implication and her mouth had tightened. “You mean Archie?”

He hadn’t answered and his silence had been affirmation enough. She’d shaken her head and glared at him with simmering eyes. “You don’t get to do that Jughead. You broke _my_ heart remember? When you pushed me out and chose the Serpents; I had every right to move on”

“And long did it take you? A week, two?”

“That’s not the point”

“No, it’s exactly the point Betty.” He’d spat. “It’s the point that you and Archie were just there waiting and ready for each other. It’s the point that you got together fast enough to prove that Veronica and I were exactly what we’d always thought we were”

“And what the hell is that?”

“Placeholders,” her eyes had flared with anger then but he’d been unable to stop himself, weeks of suffering her and Archie’s perfectly fated happiness fueling an uncontrolled outpouring of bitterness. “Just someone to occupy you till your fairy-tale prince finally came around. A charity case to take your mind off Archie while he tried every other girl in Riverdale on for size.”

He’d stopped then regretful of his own cruelty as a tear had finally broken the flooded banks of her eyes. “Betty I’m sorry I didn’t mean that.”

She’d nodded slowly and swallowed. “Is that really what you think?” she’d asked softly.

“What? No! I was just being a dick. Archie loves you”

“That’s not what I meant,” she’d sighed and he’d had the distinct feeling she was disappointed by his answer. “Your right,” she’d said eventually in a voice that at once sounded both determined and resigned. “Archie does love me. I should go find him”

He’d avoided the gang all day until in a final free period Veronica had found him sitting outside in the cold near the bins picking his nails with the point of his knife.

“Hey there Heathcliff,” she’d given the concrete an appraising look before reluctantly settling beside him. “Going to tell me what happened?”

He’d merely rolled his eyes and looked away so she’d huffed impatiently and kicked at his shin in annoyance. “Hey, while you’ve been lurking out here like Erik Destler I’ve endured a full day of watching Betty go deep Stepford. She’s been touching Archie constantly and I’m genuinely concerned she’s smiling so hard her face will break. So, spill, what the hell happened?”

“We had a fight.” He’d answered dejectedly.

“About your face?”

“Initially,” he’d shrugged. “I may have said some pretty shitty things about her and Archie. Not my finest hour to be honest”

She’d watched him for a few long moments before she’d stood and held out her hand to haul him to his feet and lead him to the cupboard under the stairs. “We were going to stop” he’d reminded her half-heartedly as he’d pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck.

“And we will,” she’d tilted her head and buried her fingers in his hair. “Just not today.”

So here he is, with his ribs screaming in pain and his broken lips stinging from the kisses she’d laid on them with no more gentleness than she usually showed, looking up at her as she rides him. Her open blouse and unclasped bra exposes the vigorous bouncing of her perfect breasts and her toned thighs work to bounce her up and down as she chases her orgasm and lures him towards his. He stills her with a firm grip on her hips, he’s not ready to be done with her just yet. Not ready to face the awful settle of reality that always follows their release.

He flips them so he’s above her and sets a deep, excruciatingly slow, rhythm that makes her whine in protest. “Jughead,” she hisses but he ignores her and kisses the protest off her lips, the faint taste of his blood mingling in their mouths.

Slowly her pleasure starts to build again as he angles himself to grind against her clit and when she tears her mouth away from his again it’s to let out a litany of gasping pleas. He likes the way his name sounds when she’s begging him to make her come, he likes how different is sounds to how Betty had said it - with so much anger and disappointment - that morning. So, he teases the raven-haired beauty below him until she’s swearing at him and the insistent thrusting of her hips against his breaks his control. He hooks her leg over his shoulder and drives into her until he has to kiss her hard to muffle the building squeals of pleasure escaping her mouth.

They dress quickly in the oppressive silence that follows and neither offers a farewell as they slip out of the door and head away in different directions. Both lost in their own thoughts, neither noticing the vibrant flash of long read hair disappearing up the stairs behind them.


	4. Outted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Brandy, MojoMore, MelEvans and the ever lovely Tfanficlover for the comments.
> 
> Also I updated the tags to make it clear that while Barchie and Bughead feature neither of those pairings are my endgame. I wouldn't want anyone to read it hoping for either and be disappointed

**Veronica's POV**

 

The morning after her latest indiscretion with Jughead Jones Veronica finds herself dabbing concealer on a love bite over her collar bone and promising herself for the hundredth time since she woke up that she will definitely not be doing it again.

 

Once was a drunken mistake. Twice could be called a fluke. Three times was beginning to look worryingly like a pattern. A desperate, self-destructive cycle of great sex, followed by crushing regret, followed by shared misery and back around to great sex again. A cycle that she’s all too aware could easily become a crutch for both of them.

 

If it were any other guy in town she’d just go with it. The sex is bordering on mind-blowing after all and its depressing how badly in need of a fuck-buddy she is right now. But not Jughead no matter how fond she’s becoming of him. Betty is her best friend and despite that the blonde has moved on with unseemly swiftness to her own ex, Veronica doesn’t think the revelation that she’s been secretly screwing Jughead on school property would be met with an outpouring of well wishes from her friend.

 

At school Betty is conspicuously absent from homeroom and Veronica spends a good ten minutes wandering the corridors before she finds her friend sitting in the girl’s locker room looking pensive. “Hey. There you are,” she gives Betty a light shove on the shoulder. “You ok?”

 

Betty turns to her with a small distracted frown. “Hey V.”

 

She lifts an eyebrow at the preoccupied response and sits down. “Ok, what’s up? Tell auntie Veronica”

 

The Blonde’s frown morphs into a tiny rueful smile. “I’m not sure you want to hear about this.”

 

She nods her understanding. “Ah, what’s Archiekins done? I’m small but I’m feisty and no one gets away with putting that sad look on my girl’s face”

 

Betty laughs and the look of pure affection in those big green eyes makes her feel even more guilty for what she’s been doing behind her friend’s back. “No V, Archie hasn’t done anything. It’s just-“ she stops herself and sighs. “Seriously Veronica you won’t want to hear about this.”

 

“Pft! No guy gets between us remember. I am here for you, B. Whatever it is you can tell me, I promise”

 

Betty looks doubtful but she can tell that the other girl is desperate to share so she nods encouragingly and waits for an explanation.

 

“Ok, but I warned you,” Betty takes a deep breath. “I slept over with Archie last night, and we,” the blush that rises on Betty’s pale skin is so bright and adorable even the painful image of Archie with someone else isn’t enough to keep the fond smile off Veronica’s face. “You know”

 

“Oh wow! You go girl” she gives betty a playful poke in the arm and congratulates herself on managing to sound like a teenager hearing about her bestie’s first time and not like a jealous ex. “Now, why the glum face? Was it bad? Don’t tell me Archie failed to satisfy.”

 

Betty sighs and studies the pale pink polish on her nails. “It was, I dunno, I’m not sure I did it for the right reasons and it was, it was good, but I-,” the blonde checks her rambling, takes a steadying breath and starts again. “It was everything I ever dreamed it would be,” she says with a distant look seeping onto her face. “It was music and candles round the bed and it was Archie”

 

“But?” Veronica prompts gently when Betty falls into contemplative silence.

 

“It was wonderful. It was everything I ever wanted and all I could think about was how much I wished it was on a counter top in a ratty old trailer on the Southside.” A tear rolls down Betty’s pale cheek and she delicately wipes it away with her fingertips.

 

Betty’s admission knocks the wind from Veronica’s chest and she takes advantage of the lighter girl’s distraction to get control of the tumbling swirl of emotions enough to make the proper response. “With Jughead?” she asks rhetorically. “Do you still have feelings for him?”

 

Betty stands suddenly and sets to pacing the floor as she struggles to articulate her feelings. “I love Archie,” she states and Veronica knows it’s absolutely true. “I do, and I am trying _so_ hard, but I can’t turn it off. I can’t even trust myself to be alone with Jughead. He came to the Blue and Gold last week and I just could not stop myself from touching him.”

 

Betty slept with Archie and, yes, she’s jealous about that. But she’d expected it so she’s ready, has been readying herself, for it. But touching Jughead? Her pink nailed hand on Jughead’s arm, maybe his cheek, her ocean green eyes drawing him in. She hadn’t been ready for that image and she’s overcome with a wave of jealousy that makes her voice a little strange. “Oh, Betty”

 

“I only went to Archie’s at all last night because Jug and I had this awful fight and I really wanted to prove to myself that I’m over him.” Betty makes a visible effort to uncurl her fists and lays the flat palms against her thighs. “You must think I’m a terrible person”

 

“No,” she retorts hotly, because even right now when she’s struggling to control the anger she feels at losing Archie to a girl that may not even want him. Even if she’s overcome with a sudden protective sort of possessiveness for Jughead that she can’t make sense of herself. Even now, she knows her friend is one of the best people she ever met. “Never”

 

“I lost my virginity to my first love last night. He did everything he could to make it special and I thought about Jughead the whole time. Who does that?” Betty ceases the frenetic pacing that had been starting to make Veronica feel nauseous to watch and turns to her with wide searching eyes. “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I stop thinking about him, why can’t I just turn it off”

 

She gives her the blonde a sympathetic look. “There’s no off switch for this Betty you know that.”

 

“What I _know_ is that Juggie doesn’t want me and no matter how hard I try to stop I still want him,” Betty bites her lip and looks so troubled her heart aches for her friend. “I still want him so much, in every way”

 

“B-“ Veronica’s words are cut off by the bell and she glances pointlessly at her watch. “We have to get to class, but you listen to me. You are not a terrible person, ok, you’re just navigating some troubled waters right now. We’ll figure it out I promise”

 

Betty’s nod is unconvinced and Veronica gives her a chiding look. “Hey I said we’ve got this. It’ll be ok.”

 

As she walks away from her distressed friend the thought that this couldn’t be further from ok fills her head. She’d suspected there where aspects of Betty and Archie’s relationship that bordered on theatre but the depth of Betty’s misgivings startles her. Her love for Jughead is far from dead, it burns as strong as ever beneath the blonde’s veneer of cheerleader smiles and sweet kisses with the quarterback.

 

She’s grateful that at least she found out about Betty’s feelings before this fling with the Serpent turned into the kind of semi-permanent arrangement that would have eventually got them caught. Before whatever misguided feelings she’s harbouring for Jughead turned this wash of jealousy, like dirty water in gut, into a full-blown shit storm. She feels like she’s dodged a bullet, the affair safely locked in the secret past. Her guilt a silent prisoner in her own chest.

 

But that guilt only builds as the day progresses. In history, she sits across from Jughead and when he removes his jacket the muscles in his arm flex in just the same way they had when he’d trapped both her hands above her head the night before as he’d pressed her up against the wall of their closet and asked her, right next to her ear and in a voice that was hoarse with lust, if she’d wanted him to fuck her.

 

The memory of how she’d nodded urgently is vivid and her eyes travel from his arm to his mouth. “Say it,” he’d insisted and his free hand had moved between their bodies to press her through her wet panties. “Tell me”

 

And tell him she had, in graphic detail that had made him groan with desire and push aside her La Perla’s to explore her almost embarrassingly wet pussy with bold deft fingers.

 

The teacher is speaking and she drags her eyes away from where her gaze has settled on his hand as he twirls his pen distractedly. She curses inwardly. Betty’s confession may have strengthened her resolve not to be with Jughead again but has done nothing to dampen the desire for him that’s been building steadily since that first drunken kiss.

 

They have a free period after History and as the class begins to disperse he catches her eye, and with a lift of his eyebrows and a flick of his head in the general direction what she’s worryingly beginning to consider ‘their’ closet, makes a tacit offer she knows any other day she’d have been all too keen to accept. Her body takes one unsanctioned step towards him before she gets a hold of herself, shakes her head decisively and strides out with far more determination than she feels.

 

The atmosphere when they gather for lunch is tense enough that Jughead gives her a questioning look from his usual place lurking just this side of the outskirts of the group, while Betty can only muster a wan smile for Archie as she takes her place beside him and opens her lunch as he looks worriedly at the blonde.

 

Usually this is where she steps up; Veronica Lodge, the girl with all the stories. But today Betty’s confession goes round and round in her head whipping up jealous and guilt in equal measure. She tries to tame her emotions to the point where she can’t think of something to say to break the awkward silence, but Jughead’s long fingers are drumming nervously against his own bare forearm and she keeps hearing her own words in her head. ‘There’s no off switch for this’

 

“Fabulous. I’ve been hoping to catch the gang all together,” a bright voice chimes behind her. “I have the most scintillating news to share”

 

The redhead bombshell’s intrusion is a welcome break in the heavy atmosphere around them, so for once Veronica resists making any biting comments as Cheryl perches on the edge of their table. “So,” she begins conspiratorially. “You will never believe what Ginger heard a few days ago when she was heading to Wetherbee’s office in third period.”

 

“What?” Kevin perks up at the whiff of gossip.

 

Cheryl leans closer and whispers in a scandalised voice. “She swears she heard someone doing _it_ in that closet under the stairs. You know the one that’s always locked.”

 

Her heart takes off like a Jack Rabbit and she glances up to see Archie looking at a visibly tense Jughead with a questioning frown. “Seriously Cheryl. No one here cares,” Archie comes to his friend’s aid and she sees this moment in slow motion, as the moment they still all have each other’s backs before the truth finally shatters their illusion of unity.

 

“I care,” Kevin sits forward looking unashamedly delighted. “Did she say who it was?”

 

Cheryl’s smile is gleefully malicious. “She didn’t know,” she tells the group clearly savouring this moment of power. “But fortunately, _I_ am not above pressing my ear to a door for a good piece of gossip”

 

“Leave it Cheryl,” Jughead growls threateningly but the high school’s undisputed queen bitch isn’t that easily intimidated.

 

She tosses her glossy hair and gives the Serpent a sexy smile. “You are truly a dark horse Forsythe. Honestly if what I heard yesterday is anything to go by.” She makes a show of fanning herself. “Wow!”

 

“Jug?” Betty’s voice is so soft it’s barely audible but the pain in it still blares across Veronica’s mind like a siren.

 

“Cheryl, let it go,” Veronica demands. “Now!”

 

Cheryl turns to her with an innocent, wide-eyed, expression. “Say please V,” she smirks victoriously. “You certainly had no problem saying it over and over yesterday. Strange, I never had Veronica Lodge down as the type to beg”

 

In the corner of her eye she sees Jughead close his eyes in defeat. Opposite her Betty looks like she’s been punched in the gut and Archie’s baffled expression is quickly darkening with anger and understanding.

 

Cheryl laughs musically, clearly pleased with the maelstrom she’d created. “You know secrets are poison,” she intones seriously as she hops off the table and turns to leave with a bright. “You’re welcome”

 

The silence that follows is long and tense. Jughead doesn’t open his eyes and Archie stares at him, tensions coiling in the redhead’s muscles. Opposite her Betty’s gaze is locked on her face and Kevin looks around the group with darting nervous eyes.

 

“Guys?” He questions eventually and the sound seems to free Archie from a temporary paralysis.

 

“You slept with Ronnie?” he demands in a low dangerous voice and Jughead opens his eyes and gives his friend a pleading regretful look.

 

“Archie, man I-“

 

“Did you?” Archie insists darkly.

 

Jughead looks decidedly nauseous as he tries to placate his friend. “It’s not like you th-”

 

“Did you fuck her?” Archie barks, not loudly but harshly enough to force a straight answer.

 

“Yes”

 

“What the hell?” Archie stands suddenly and Jughead mirrors the action so the table is between them. “Why the hell would you do that?” Archie spits. “Why her?”

 

Jughead’s apologetic expression shifts with a sudden flare of defensive anger. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I break some sort of bro code about exes?” he glances pointedly at Betty but the blonde’s eyes are still boring into the side of Veronica’s face, she can feel their intensity against her skull as she watches Jughead defend them. 

 

“You lied,” Archie counters. “Both of you,” he looks briefly at her as he draws her into his reproach. “You went behind our backs”

 

“You didn’t need to know,” Jughead emphasises each word with a stab of finger into his own palm. “It didn’t mean anything.”

 

“And you think that makes it better?”

 

“I dunno man, I didn’t think at all.” Jughead’s anger drains away and he looks remorseful again. “I’m sorry, ok. It just happened”

 

The two men fall silent and in the pause Betty finally speaks. “How could you?” she asks quietly and Veronica has no choice but finally meet the hard, accusing, emerald of her eyes. “How could you do that to me V. You knew. You knew how I-”

 

“Betty, it was before” She knows her expression must be as guilty and pleading as Jughead’s as she tries to excuse herself. “I swear, I haven’t been with him since we talked”

 

Betty stands quickly, the movement accompanied by the screech of her chair over the polished floor, and glares down at her. “Oh wow. So, you haven’t screwed my boyfriend since homeroom. Congratulations Veronica, friend of the year.”

 

The injustice of Betty’s words not just to her but to Jughead and Archie is enough to override her guilt and she fires back harshly. “He’s not your boyfriend Betty”

 

“No,” Betty takes a deep breath and holds her gaze coldly. “But he is Jughead, and you knew what that means.” Then she’s gone, striding away from the shattered group with long purposeful strides that somehow fail to bring the usual bounce to her bright ponytail.

 

“Shit,” Veronica hisses under her breath and finally risks a look at Archie, who looks like his world just blew up in his face. She guesses it actually did. “I better go find her” she goes after Betty leaving the three men staring silently after her.

 

She finds Betty sitting alone on the bleachers seemingly unconcerned by the freezing wind that whistles across the playing field. “Hey,” she greets cautiously and sits down a few feet away.

 

Betty doesn’t answer, so she pulls her coat tight around her and waits. Eventually the blonde speaks in a quiet even voice. “If you just wanted meaningless sex you could have had it with literally anyone in Riverdale V. So why did it have to be him?”

 

“Kindred spirits I guess. It felt good to be with someone who got it, who was as miserable as I was.” She sighs knowing there’s no excuse but giving one anyway. “Also, Whiskey. The first time anyway”

 

“First time? How many- no don’t answer that, just-“ Betty stops herself and finally turns her ocean coloured gaze on her friend. “Do you love him? Does he love you?”

 

“What? No. Betty, no and no, absolutely not,” she spots a chip in her nail polish and rubs at it with the pad of her thumb unwilling to look Betty in the eye. “Look we’d both lost everything and we had no one to blame but ourselves. So, we’d hook up and for a little while we could forget how badly we’d screwed things up. That’s all it was.”

 

“Is it over?”

 

“Yes, God, of course,” she insists but even as she does she’s hit with the memory of stepping towards him earlier that day, of the magnetic pull of his body,  and something of that conflict must colour her voice because Betty’s brow furrows with doubt. “If I’d known you still had feelings for him,” she continues more strongly because this much is true. “I never would have done it. I swear”

 

Betty stands and looks at her with cold sceptical eyes, then she goes leaving her to look out despondently over the empty playing field with the horrible feeling that she’s lost all her friends today and the dishonourable desire to find Jughead Jones and fuck away this anguish in the dusty discomfort of their not so secret sanctuary under the stairs.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know how you felt the reveal went, I love Cheryl


	5. Scorned, no fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of Archie POV in the wake of Cheryl exposing the Jeronica sexcapades. 
> 
> Thanks for the comments last time and sorry this chapter is short and low on Jeronica. Next chapter will follow shortly after and is loaded with Jeronica flavoured treats for all.

**Archie's POV**

 

“You want to hit me dude?” Jughead ask with no hint of humour when the silence following Veronica and Betty’s departure becomes unbearable. 

 

He glances at the dark-haired man’s already battered face and sighs. “Not really”

 

“Arch, I’m-“

 

“Stop Jug,” he cuts off another sad eyed apology from his old friend. “I don’t even know If I’m mad at you. No” he corrects himself, all too aware of the sour bile-like taste in his mouth and the churn in his stomach. “I am definitely mad at you. I’m just not sure if I’m allowed to be”

 

“You are,” Jughead assures him penitently. “We shouldn’t have lied. But it was never meant to be a thing, it was just- “

 

“Sex?” an image of Jughead and Veronica together with their matching hair and contrasting skin assaults him and he thinks that maybe he does want to hit Jughead after all.

 

“Escapism. But, yeah sex I guess. Veronica and I felt the same. Miserable and stuck that way,” he pauses and scratches his head through his beanie. “Doing, _that_ , was an illusion of freedom, that’s all”

 

The questions he wants to asks are all the pointless clichés of the cuckold he can’t even claim to be.  _How many times? Where? Was it good?_ Instead he bites his tongue and in the silence another apology tumbles from Jughead’s mouth

 

“Jesus stop saying you’re fucking sorry man” he snarls and Jughead recoils visibly from the force of his anger and clamps down on yet another apology. “It’s pretty moot when you screwed Veronica behind my back and Betty just called _you_ her boyfriend,” jealousy burns so hotly in his veins he can’t accurately discern its primary source. 

 

Cheryl’s spiteful words circle in his brain “one to beg” that’s what Cheryl had called his ex. The Veronica he knew had always commanded their lovemaking with a passionate self-assurance, taking her pleasure with a knowing smile and a wicked laugh, always in control. His mind can’t picture her – and yet won’t stop trying to picture her – spread beneath his friend so lost in sensation that she would beg him, plead for him, to complete her. 

 

The visceral images almost completely eclipse the heart deep pain of Betty’s careless words. In the heat of her anger and betrayal she’d called Jughead her boyfriend. She’d looked at Veronica not with the confused and conflicted jealousy with which he now regards his own friend but with an anger of white hot intensity. He knows he’s an oblivious fool more often than not, but even he can weigh the significance of that.

 

He’s knows he’s lost Betty, or more accurately he never had her, and that loss fills him not with the jealousy he’d felt when she’d first chosen Jughead but with a sense of resigned grief as he comes to realise that his ‘someday’ with Betty was truly just a childish fantasy. A fantasy they once shared but now he must bury alone. 

 

With a prohibition on apologising Jughead doesn’t have any response to that other than to watch the floor and chew the nail of his thumb. 

 

If he looks past his own anger he can see that Jughead hasn’t really done much wrong. Veronica is a free agent and Jughead can’t really be held responsible for Betty’s feelings. So, while he’s hurt and angry and so jealous he wants to put his fist through something, he’s aware that that something really shouldn’t be his best friend’s face.

 

“Archie, I’m-“

 

“Just leave it ok, Jug” he snaps and Jughead nods dejectedly, his lips pressed together in an attempt to suppress his emotions and Archie feels himself begin to relent. “Just give me time alright?” he says more softly. Then he goes with no idea where he’s headed – though definitely not to English Lit class – leaving his friend and all his certainties behind.

 

He spends a while pacing the halls before he turns a corner opposite the gym and feels himself slam into an invisible wall. A little further down the corridor Betty stands opposite Jughead, her arms wrapped around her own waist like a shield.

 

“I can’t do this Jughead” she says firmly and he draws back a little so he can watch them without being seen. The need to know what they’re saying more powerful than any half-remembered regard for privacy.

 

“Betty, please” Jughead steps toward Betty, his hand lifting to reach for her but she steps back and raises both hands defensively.

 

“No,” her voice is shrill and panicked. “I said I can’t. I have to find Archie.”

 

He slips away, not ready to face her. More terrified than curious about what she will say when they finally talk. He blows off the rest of the school day, lurks in his room with the curtains drawn and his phone off.  P laying video games and stubbornly not thinking about the two women he loves in such very different ways or the man he calls his brother.

 

Eventually Betty comes to him with big troubled eyes. “Hey Arch,” she greets timidly and he wants to turn her away and exists a little while longer in a world where his best friend hasn’t inadvertently stolen everything from him.

 

“Betty,” he steps out of the house because his dad is in and he doesn’t want to deal with losing his girlfriend and his father’s concern about it in one day.

 

“We need to talk,” she states obviously as they settle on the porch and he nods.

 

They fall silent but there’s really only one place to start so finally he gathers and courage and names the pain between them. “You called him your boyfriend” he says in a tone far less accusatory than he’d expected.

 

“I know,” she whispers. Really, he’d have imagined she’d have thought about what she was going to say before she came over but she seems totally unprepared. “I’m sorry, I-“ she trails off and closes her eyes.

 

“Did you ever-” he swallows and looks at her. “Was this ever real?”

 

“Yes,” she’s suddenly animated, she leans forward and grasps his hand. “Yes. I love you Archie, I do.”

 

He takes a deep breath and feels it shudder painfully through his chest. He can’t think of anything to say to that so he draws back his hand from her grip, stays quiet, and waits for her to speak again.

 

“I’m sorry, Archie. I tried, I tried so hard, but-“ she looks so agonised that the part of him that’s loved her since kindergarten longs to comfort her even if he feels like she’s trampled on his heart. 

 

“It’s not supposed to be hard Betts” he says in defeat and she sighs and nods, tears brimming in her eyes.

 

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry,” she doesn’t look at him, she studies her own hands. “He broke my heart Arch. He hurt me so much, I needed to believe I could get over him and I’ve loved you for so long, I thought I could do that with you.”

 

He feels used and betrayed but he feels her love too, flowing back over the years they’ve been friends and forward to into a future he can’t imagine not containing her. “I get it” he says in the end. Because he does. 

 

He ran from the pain of losing Veronica as surely as she ran from her own broken heart. But he falls in love easy and she falls in love hard. In just six months he’s loved four women while in her whole life she’s loved only two men. With the brutal clarity of hindsight, he sees that he should have realised she couldn’t move on so fast from loving Jughead. 

 

He wants to hold her to account for her dishonest heart but she’s Betty Cooper and she’s loved him through the hardest times in his life, through every mistake he’s ever made, without asking for anything in return. Now she’s the one devastated by her own mistakes and he owes her better than his condemnation.

 

“It’s not ok Betty,” he tells her and she bites her lip and cries fat silent tears that tug at his loyal soul. “But it will be. Eventually. I mean, it’s not like breaking up is going to stop us being friends. At least not forever”

 

The gratitude on her face, the love and relief in her eyes strengthen the part of him that wants to be mature and gracious about this and he finds he can silence the lesser man who wants to lash out until she hurts as much as he does. 

 

When she chokes his name through her tears he takes her in his arms and they bury their faces into each other’s necks so that he feels her tears against his skin. “It’s alright Betty, we’ll work it out”

 

Eventually she pulls away and looks at him. “And you and Jughead? It’s not his fault, he loves you and he needs you”

 

Perhaps her need to protect the man that still holds her heart should re-ignite his jealousy and anger. But  truthfully  he’s always shared that same yearning to protect Jughead from the unrelenting river of shit that has  always flowed through his distinctly uncharmed life and he finds it’s not so hard to give her the answer she wants. “We’ll work it out too”

 

She’s nods gratefully and pulls him into another hug. “I love you” she says and he squeezes her to him and to his surprise replying in kind doesn’t hurt as much as he’d have expected.

 

When they pull apart he turns her previous question around on her. “What about you and Jughead?”

 

She squares her shoulders and sets her face into a paper-thin mask of composure under which he can clearly see the breaking of her heart. “There is no me and Jughead”

 

“Oh Betty,” he pulls her close again while somewhere in the darkness a night jar calls out harshly and the drone of a motorcycle’s engine recedes into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now where could that motorbike be roaring off to I wonder, tune in next time to find out


	6. In the end, a small beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.
> 
> Set post 2x08 Betty and Archie enter a relationship, leaving Jughead and Veronica heartbroken and a night of drunken revenge sex morphs into something far more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this chapter gives us all a little Jeronica happy

**Veronica’s POV**

“Jughead?” she’s shocked to see him at her door after the revelations of the day. Yet here he is, leaning against the door frame with a little more James Dean to his brooding posture than she feels equipped to handle.

 

He looks at his battered boots and the pain he’s in seems to radiate from him; dwarfing hers and chilling her skin. “Rough day?” she asks just to try and get one of those small wry smiles of his.

 

He lifts his desolate gaze to hers without even the faintest twitch of his lips. “Can I come in? I need a drink”

 

“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” she tells him regretfully and he frowns looking genuinely perplexed.

 

“Why not?”

 

“Excuse me, did you not witness the today’s total friend-mageddon?” she huffs, impatient to be rid of him before she does something stupid.  “So, if you want to follow in your daddy’s dipsomaniac footsteps you can do it without my daddy’s thirty-year-old scotch”

 

“Your folks still out of town?” he asks as he lazily pushes off the door-frame and steps into the room.

 

“Sure, come on in.” she mumbles sarcastically but she fetches the scotch anyway and pours two shots that neither of them drink.

 

“Did you talk to Betty?” she asks, wondering if her friend has finally come clean about her feelings. Although logic tells her that if she had Jughead wouldn’t be here looking so broken at her door.

 

“She didn’t want to talk to me,” he runs a hand over his face. “Archie may forgive me though, so that’s something”

 

She nods, glad right down in her bones that the two men are making a better job of reconciling than she and Betty. “Good”

 

“You talk to Betty?” he rubs his eye with his knuckle like a tired child and she feels a swell of affection for him rise in her chest.

 

“Not really, she’s so pissed at me right now she wasn’t exactly keen on hearing my side”

 

They fall silent and in the quiet she turns her guilt over in her mind. Cognitively she knows Betty’s anger is hypocritical. Betty screwed her ex and she screwed Betty’s, she lied about it, but Betty did it first. An impartial observer would probably declare the scales pretty much even.

 

Cognitively she knows that she and Betty are wronged and wronging in equal measure. In her heart though she feels like the villain. Isn’t that her role after all? The dark to Betty’s light, the wicked temptress to Betty’s wholesome virtue, the whore to her angel.

 

Jughead sighs and runs a hand over his face. She imagines he sees himself in exactly the same way. How alike they are, she thinks, underneath how very different; a perfectly matched pair of opposites.

 

“What do you know?” he asks eventually and she’s struggles to pull her mind out of her own reverie to understand his question. “Betty said you knew something” he explains with a sigh as if he’s exasperated by his own need to ask.

 

“Oh that,” she looks around the room just to have a moment to gather herself before she speaks, before she gives him the answer that guarantees she’ll lose him and everything they’ve never had. “Before Cheryl’s triumphantly gleeful expose Betty and I had talked. About you actually and how she still has feelings for you. I half thought you guys would be back together by now”

 

“Hardly. I’ve just come from Archie’s” Jughead tells her in a bitter disconsolate voice. “Went to apologise some more and arrived just in time to hear Betty telling Archie that she and I are nothing. That and a heartfelt exchange of ‘I love you’s. So, if you’re hoping to get Archie back by default then you’re out of luck”

 

Had she? She wonders. Had she pinned her hopes of reconciliation with Archie on Jughead’s ability to win back Betty. Perhaps she had, at least at the start, which she admits is pretty tragic. Although lately she thinks perhaps she’s been plumbing different depths of pathetic.

 

“I wasn’t,” she denies weakly and he scoffs.

 

“Right,” he scoffs and rolls his eyes. “You weren’t hoping Betty and Archie’d split and he’d be so jealous that I screwed you he’d want you back?”

 

She wants to deny it but he might be right, and if he’s not then the truth is definitely something she’s not ready to explore.

 

Jughead barely waits for a response anyway. Hurt as he is he seems unable to stop himself from lashing out. Though whether his bile is meant for her or for himself she’s unsure. Either way his next outpouring of spite cuts deep because it’s so miserably true.

 

“Face it Veronica, this is how it was always going to end,” he snarls. “You and I, we’re disposable. Sure, I’m scum everyone knows that, me most of all. But you. You thought you mattered. Rich, beautiful, clever, Veronica, you thought you could mean something. Turns out you’re as easy to cast aside as some trailer park trash son of a drunk.”

 

She swallows down the rising pain of his hurtful words and focuses on him rather than on her own arrogant naivety. “You’re not trash, and I’m-“

 

“Yes, I am!” he cuts in emphasising each word, his eyes bright and hard with anger and a bitterness she imagines has lived in him far longer than the few weeks since he and Betty parted. “And you’re a trinket. A bauble. Diverting for a while but ultimately valueless. At least to Archie”

 

She bites her lip and immediately he’s full of regret. “I’m sorry, V, I didn’t mean-“

 

“Yes, you did,” she tries to take a deep calming breath but the way it shudders in her lungs just underscores how much her heart hurts right now. Weeks of pretending to be fine, of telling herself that she’s over Archie have worn her last nerve. Sex with Jughead has fried her common sense and with all her emotions frayed she’s wide open to the cut of his devastating reality check.

 

To them she’s the sexy girl, the party girl. She’s everything she thought she’d turned her back on when she left New York and all the work she’s done here has been for nothing. Archie had declared a love that went no deeper than their skin. He hadn’t stuck by her for a single day after she couldn’t form the words to tell him just how deeply under her skin she felt that love, that gratitude. Instead he’d run straight to his happily ever after with the incomparably lovable Betty without glancing back once.

 

She doesn’t fight the tears. Hiding them from Jughead feels unnecessary no matter how weak she looks or how her make-up runs and smudges. He tilts his head and contemplates her in that way of his that is at once intense and strangely detached and she looks back at him passively, waiting, just holding still, until he speaks.

 

“You are stunning when you cry,” he observes with understated emotion and apology in his quiet voice. “So completely human”

 

He takes a step towards her and her body trembles with resentment at what he’s brought her to but also with anticipation. The murky blue of his eyes has darkened, the brittleness of his wounded gaze blurring into something far more captivating, and she can feel the draw of him chipping away at her resolve. But then she’d based that resolve on Betty’s confession of secret feelings for Jughead, feelings the blonde has easily brushed aside in favour of Archie. So really who’s she protecting?

 

He stops just an arm’s length away from her and looks searchingly into her eyes. Whatever he’s looking for he must find because he takes a breath that’s deep enough for her to see his chest rise and fall. “Take off your dress,” he says and despite the softness of his voice its unmistakably an order and part of her rails against the audacity.

 

“Excuse me, what?” she bristles but he doesn’t back down. There’s that power to him that’s been growing since he joined the Serpents, the undeniable thrum of something dark and unyielding that she can’t deny really turns her on.

 

He reaches across the air between them and tenderly thumbs the wetness from her cheek, the pad of his thumb rough and warm on her skin. “You’re already naked Veronica,” he tells her as he pulls off his beanie with his free hand, the action baring him as surely as her tears bare her. “Take it off. Please. I need to see something beautiful right now”

 

Nothing. Not her own pride, not her loyalty to Betty, and certainly not her fading yearning to have Archie back, could stop her from complying then. Her hands move of their own volition to slowly unzip the side of her dress so she can shimmy it off her shoulders and let it fall with a faint rustle to the floor.

 

Blue eyes follow its descent then scan unhurriedly back up over her body. His gaze lingers on her breasts and he makes a tiny gesture with his head that’s no less a demand than his earlier words and her bra joins her dress at her feet so that she’s standing before him in nothing but her Gianvito Rossi heels, her pearls, and a tiny scrap of satin that cost more than his entire outfit.

 

He steps in close, lays his hands on her chest just below her throat, and walks her backward till her legs hit the couch and he can press her down so she’s sitting and he’s on his knees in front of her.

 

Without breaking eye contact he runs his hand from her calves, up the outside of her thighs to her hips, then back to the inside of her knees so he can spread her legs. She feels wanton and exposed when his gaze falls on satin covered pussy and her body pulses with excited expectation as he drops his head, his hair falling like a raven’s wing over one eye.

 

He kisses her through the thin material of her panties and she moans and presses up against his mouth. “Fuck yes,” she’s aware in the back of her mind that she shouldn’t be doing this, that this doesn’t move them on from Archie and Betty. To call it a rebound suggests something dynamic, an unpredictable bounce back from heartbreak, this is something else. This is quicksand, pulling them both down deeper into their despair.

 

He pauses just long enough to remove her knickers, carefully guiding the fabric past her heels without removing them and she feels sexy as hell wearing nothing but her jewellery and five-inch heels as he begins exploring her pussy with his tongue.

 

He’s not like other teenage boys – and if she’s honest she’s had more than her share for comparison – there’s nothing clumsy or over eager about him. The quirks of personality that make him social detached and naturally observant, lend him a rare self-control and an attentive patience she blesses as he takes his time charting her pleasure - her moans and pleas his compass points - until she writhes against him.

 

She buries her fingers in the now familiar thickness of his hair, gathering up the unruly waves and pushing them back so she can see his face as he stops sucking on her clit in favour of circling it with his tongue as his fingers tease around her entrance till she’s squirming and babbling.

 

“Jesus. Fuck you’re good,” she gasps appreciatively as he works her with his mouth and his fingers continue to neglect her core, leaving it deliciously empty and yearning so that all the sensation is concentrated on the rhythmic flicks of his tongue and the desperate need to be filled up with him.

 

“Please” she whines senselessly and bucks up against him in a quest to end his merciless teasing and find her release. He relents and grasps her arse, grinding her against his mouth as he sucks hard on her clit.

 

“Hmmm,” she sighs as she comes back from her orgasm with her ears ringing and her arms and legs limp and heavy. She’s barely aware of him laying her down on the couch or of his shirt landing on the carpet as he positions himself in the ungainly v of her spread legs.

 

She’s aware only of his weight hovering above her, of the slick wet feel of her own release on her thighs and the still aching void of wanting at her centre. He undoes his belt and she thinks foggily that she should probably do something to help if only she could get her body to work properly again. She manages to lift her hand to the back of his neck, fingers fumbling for the silky hair she’s becoming so addicted to caressing.

 

“Tell me,” he murmurs, his voice hovering by her ear his cock poised at her entrance.

 

He likes her consent explicit she’s noticed. The first time’s awkward “Are you sure?” replaced in their subsequent encounters by this two-word demand not just for permission, but for entreaty.

 

“I need you,” she lifts her hips for emphasis but he evades her, pulling back and silently demanding more.

 

“Fuck, Jughead,” she curses and her pussy aches with the need to be filled up with him. “I need you inside me. Now”

 

Clearly that’s what he wanted to hear, he’s inside her in one smooth stroke and she’s grateful once again for oral contraceptive, the feel of him entering her without barrier or interruption is everything she’s been craving. It’s the drug that’ll ruin her if she doesn’t get herself into rehab soon.

 

They’ve explored each other in three carnal assignations as thoroughly as many couples do in months but this is new. He holds himself on his elbows either side of her head, moves inside her with deep unhurried thrusts, and looks into her eyes. His gaze is deep and enigmatic and she feels open, truly naked, with him for the first time. She’s scared it’ll be too much. That he’ll run from it, or maybe that she will, so she cages him with her arms and legs around his body and holds him tight.

 

“Veronica,” he murmurs as he presses his forehead to hers and she thinks that this is what it feels like to be needed and to need another person in exactly equal measure.

 

It’s new and it makes the air in her lungs feel oddly thick. “Jughead,” she whispers and for the first time she wonders what it would be like to allow herself to fall in love with him, perhaps for him to fall in love with her too. When he kisses her, his tongue gentle and searching in her mouth, she thinks it would probably be quite wonderful.

 

She sheaths her nails for once. Her fingertips are light and tender on his back, her body yielding, and her kisses soft. His hands when they go to explore her body are gentler than they’ve ever been on her skin and his mouth on her neck won’t leave a single bruise tonight.

 

They’re kissing when they come together the heat of him pouring into her as she shudders around him is far more intimate than she’d imagined she could feel with him. He pulls her to him and, almost like real lovers, they lie tangled together in the afterglow.

 

The thought of loving him pushes again at her mind but it’s not her that voices it. “Do you ever wish you loved me?” he whispers and she turns her head to find his eyes as he continues. “Or I loved you?”

 

“Yes, I do,” she pauses, but in the low light with his skin sticking to hers and his cum already dribbling down her thigh it seems ridiculous to be anything other than honest. “I think it would be pretty fabulous”

 

He hums and tightens his arms around her. “Wanna try it on for size?” he asks, half joking, half not.

 

“Sure,” She smirks a little and it feels fond on her own face.

 

He answers with a shy grin. “I love you Veronica”

 

“I love you too Jughead,” the words come easily, and aren’t they supposed to be hard? She loved, loves, Archie and they’d stuck in her throat as jagged as fish bones. If she loved Jughead, if this feeling, like the swell of the ocean in her chest, was love, then surely the words couldn’t spill so naturally from her mouth.

 

His brows knit together and as his mouth moves she’s struck with a sudden desperate need to silence him. She forces a laugh that’s just a little off key. “Ok, not a great fit.”

 

His mouth closes and he swallows hard and nods while tenderly stroking her back. “Shame,” he sighs and she feels it tremble a little through his chest. “It might have made things easier”

 

“Or so much worse. Besides,” she drags her nails teasingly over his shoulders in an attempt to lighten the suddenly heavy atmosphere. “These claws are purely decorative, no way I could take down Betty in a fight over you”

 

“I told you,” he huffs in irritation. “Betty doesn’t want me”

 

“And I told you she does. She said so; in actual words” he tries to disentangle himself from her then but she tightens her body around his and holds him fast. “And I quote, ‘I still want him in _every_ way’”

 

“She chose Archie,” he relaxes back into her arms and she’s aware they shouldn’t be talking about her best friend’s love for him when they’re wrapped up in each other’s naked bodies. “I’m done Veronica, I can’t hope anymore, it’s just too fucking painful”

 

She doesn’t press him any further, instead she kisses him. She’s all too aware that this will be their last night together and she’s selfish enough to accept his version of the truth and consider him a free agent one last time before she lifts her sword to fight for his happiness with Betty the happiness she finds she wants for him with a desperate intensity.

 

Tomorrow she’s fully intending to get all up in his business whether he likes it or not. Betty is lying to someone and she’s pretty sure it’s not her. So, if the blonde’s denying her feelings for Jughead and declaring her love for Archie, then it’s two of the most important men in her life that are being deceived.

 

Betty might hate her, Jughead will abandon her, and Archie may never take her back but she’ll be damned if she’ll let any of them live a lie. She owes them all so much more for accepting her with all her foibles and trusting her promise to be a better person.

 

So, tonight she’ll be weak so tomorrow she can be strong.

 

She rolls Jughead over so she can straddle him and explore his chest with open mouthed kisses as he hardens again beneath her. She’s determined not to miss a thing. She wants to kiss every inch of his skin. She wants to take him in her mouth and hear him beg for her. She wants him deep inside her again. She wants, most of all, to feel that moment when the easy self-control that makes him such a consummate lover breaks and he’s driving mercilessly into her growling her name in her ear as he spills himself inside her.

 

She has just one more night with him and she’s going to have it all.

 

She wakes early the next morning. Sore and sated and alone. On her bedside table is a torn piece of paper bearing the words “Thank you”, a scribbled crown, and a lopsided heart. Affection pushes up from her chest to sketch a sad fond smile on her face as she traces the image with her fingertips and thinks maybe it fits better than either of them knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go on leave a comment, you know you want to. :-)


	7. Not letting go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not stupid. They know there's no peace in revenge. But the sight of Betty and Archie together makes them stupid and whisky makes them weak, so they take the only revenge they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, now don't shoot me things are going to get a little less Jeronica-y for a couple of chapters. Trust me please, I know where i'm going with this. All love stories should have some adversity right. 
> 
> Right?

**Betty’s POV**

Betty dabs concealer under her eyes in a vain attempt to hide the dark rings that have settled there in the aftermath of Cheryl’s revelations about her best friend and her ex and her subsequent, inevitable, break up with Archie.

 

Sleep had been elusive that night and the first tendrils of dawn pressing through the opaque morning mist had found her sitting at the kitchen counter in her dressing gown staring out through the back window and playing out scenarios in her head.

 

Her favourite so far, and the one she plays again in her head as she sits at her dresser, is one where Jughead vanishes back to Southside High as suddenly as he returned to Riverdale and Veronica and her parents have fled the law overnight leaving nothing but rumours in their wake.

 

It’s not realistic and deep down it isn’t even what she wants, but the thought of facing either of them today forces her to curl her fists into the towel over her knees to avoid marking her own palms with red crescents of transient control.

 

She tightens her pony tail, remembering Toni’s snide comment about it not so long ago. Funny how jealous she’d been of Toni then and the way she’d looked at Jughead. She’d been afraid that she’d end up competing – and really how could she – with the sass and sex appeal of the gorgeous serpent. Strange to find a far sexier snake had been lurking closer still.

 

Veronica Lodge. Her incomparable best friend. The most stylish, confident and sexy woman she’s ever met and now Jughead’s lover. The thought makes her feel physically sick and her hands go still on her hair as she studies her own nauseous features.

 

“Elizabeth,” her mother enters the room without waiting for an invitation and looks at her with the usual Alice Cooper disapproval. “Betty dear you look terrible”

 

“Thanks mom,” she responds dryly and stands to gather her backpack. “I’ll see you later”

 

Archie won’t be ready to go yet and she’s perfectly happy to walk in alone today. Or at least she is until she finds Veronica waiting a hundred yards from the school gate ready to pounce. “B,” the brunette greets cautiously. “Can we talk?”

 

“No,” she tries to evade her friend but Veronica’s not easily shaken. Even wearing her customary five inch heels she easily matches Betty’s plimsoll clad pace.

 

“Betty, seriously, we have to talk this out”

 

“And say what V?” she rounds on Veronica imitating her nastily. “Sorry I screwed the love of your life girl, totally my bad”

 

“Betty, believe me, if I’d known-“

 

“You should have known,” Betty feels tears prick her eyes and swipes at them angrily with the back of her hand. “You were my best friend, you were supposed to know”

 

Veronica looks shocked, as if she really hadn’t thought of it that way. As if she hadn’t considered that Betty would expect her to see beneath her perfect girl next door façade to the truth of her broken heart. “I’m sorry,” Veronica says again and she’s already sick of hearing it. How many more times will they all say those pointless seven letters that never actually fix anything?

 

She turns to go but Veronica’s voice stops her after just a few paces. “You were wrong”

 

Turning back, she sees the slump of her friend’s shoulders, the deep furrows in her brow, the weakening of the indomitable Veronica Lodge and it’s that and only that that makes her ask. “About?”

 

“Jughead,” his name on those sinful black cherry lips makes her bristle with renewed anger but she doesn’t have time to hit back before Veronica elaborates. “Not wanting you. You were wrong, he’s heartbroken without you B”

 

Her expression twists sarcastically. “Sure, so heartbroken he’s been spending his free periods putting it to Veronica Lodge in the nearest available storage space.” The words are deliberately ugly. She wants to shame Veronica and the flash of guilt on her friend's pretty face sends a slight fizz of victory through her veins.

 

Veronica collects herself quickly. “Yes,” she retorts emphatically. “ _That_ heartbroken. Gees Betty do you he was doing it because he was just so happy? He hurt you and he lost you and he couldn’t handle it so yes, he ‘put it to me’ a few times to dull the ache. That’s all it was.”

 

Veronica sighs and continues more softly. “And yes, you’re right, I am your best friend and maybe I should have seen you weren’t really all in with Archie. But how could Jughead have possibly known? He didn’t do any of this to hurt you Betty.” Veronica squares her shoulders and delivers her final words with the sad eyed stoicism of a martyr. “He wouldn’t, he loves you way too much”

 

With a swirl of raven hair and a click of expensive heels she goes leaving Betty to watch the empty space where she’d stood and fight the chaos in her mind. _‘He loves you way too much.’_

Does he? She wonders. And if he does what does it actually change? All the reasons he broke her heart in the first place are still just as valid now as they were a few weeks ago. But perhaps their perspectives have changed. Perhaps seeing her with Archie has made him feel the way finding out about him and Veronica has made her feel. Desperately jealous and ferociously possessive. Perhaps the call to fight that rages in her chest also rages in his.

 

It’s impossible to tell when she passes him in the hallway later. He’s completely unreadable, the collar of his leather jacket turned up, his beanie pulled down as if to minimise the amount of him exposed to the world. She watches him pass and envies him his armour when she feels like her bleeding heart is beating right there in the middle of her chest for all to see.

 

Kevin finds her skulking in the empty library at recess, “Hey Betty. How you doing?”

 

She gives him a look she hopes clearly indicates the ‘how do you think?’ that she doesn’t say and he replies with a look of his own in which she reads the clear ‘don’t even think about shitting me here’ and she smiles ruefully and sits down on the steps.

 

“It’s a mess Kev,” she says with a sigh as he settles beside her.

 

“You and Archie broke up?” he asks and she gives him another look.

 

“Obviously,” she props her chin on her hands and looks straight ahead as she speaks. “Even Archie isn’t oblivious enough to miss the part where it flipped out on Veronica and called Jughead my boyfriend. He’s been pretty amazing about it, considering”

 

“He’s still talking to Jughead anyway,” Kevin tells her and the relief she feels that she hasn’t driven a wedge between them is like a rush of clean water through her sludge clogged mind. “But given that you’re hiding here and Veronica blew off history and went home,” Kevin continues. “I’m guessing things aren’t so friendly with B and V?”

 

“Not really,” it’s good to talk to Kevin he is after all the only impartial person she can turn to in this. “I want to forgive her Kev, I do, but I keep imagining her with Jug and I, God, I just can’t.”

 

“Would it be a violation of the friend code to point out you and Jughead were broken up?” he asks cautiously and at her glower hurries to add. “Although that is totally not the point.”

 

She doesn’t respond and he awkwardly offers a camp. “That bitch” which actually makes her laugh.

 

“Thanks Kev,” she says fondly. “I appreciate the loyalty but it’s fine. I know you and V are friends too, it’s ok.”

 

Kevin looks relieved and she squeezes his knee and leans her head on his shoulder. “I will forgive her, eventually. I’m just not ready to do it yet.”

 

She knows she will forgive Veronica. Deep down she also knows a large portion of her anger is irrational at best and hypocritical at worst. She expected Veronica to have just known about her feelings for Jughead while she showed no such intuition about how deeply losing Archie hurt her friend.

 

Is Veronica really so fine an actress that Betty could not have realised for a moment that she was broken hearted too? Or more likely - and she forces her mind down this path because the in spite of everything Veronica came into her life at just the right time and she does truly love her friend - Veronica didn’t see for exactly the same reason she didn’t: because her own pain clouded her vision. Because pretending to be ok took up so much energy that neither of them had any left to analyse the other’s feelings.

 

“And Jughead?”

 

“Don’t,” she rubs her forehead. She can feel the Jughead induced chaos rising, filling every square inch of her mind-scape with confusion and contradiction, hope, anger and jealousy. “I don’t have the head-space right now to think about him especially with Veronica actually trying to tell me he still loves me this morning”

 

“Do you think she’s right?”

 

“Hardly,” she feels a sharp stab of annoyance at Kevin’s question. It’s really not that simple. “He slept with my best friend”

 

“And you slept with his,” Kevin lifts his hands defensively at her wounded glare. “It’s a mess sure but you get to decide if the Serpents, and Archie, and Veronica are road blocks or just speed bumps in your epic star-crossed Romeo and Juliet story. It’s up to you Betty, but maybe you actually need to talk to him to figure it out”

 

 

She decides as she heads to lunch that she hates it when Kevin proves himself to be wise. Wise enough that she’s actually looking for Jughead now instead of avoiding him.

 

Predictably she finds him in the cafeteria already surrounded by empty plates and packets. Distractedly she wonders how you go about getting a metabolism like his, it would certainly make squeezing into her cheerleading outfits that much easier.

 

He’s staring straight ahead as she approaches and she take the opportunity to study his profile. She knows his face so well; she’s known it her whole life. She’s watched it change and mature, the hamster cheeks she’d thought adorable back when he’d been so proud of his two front teeth – while Archie had sported only gaps and gums – have smoothed out over the years giving way to the cut of his high sharp cheekbones.

 

She tilts her head to study the lines more closely. His jaw is a little soft she supposes, not as strong certainly as Kevin’s or Archie’s and his nose is, if she’s being completely honest, a tiny bit pointy. He’s certainly not as conventionally handsome as his best friend, but she’s aware that you don’t have to be in love with him to appreciate the fullness of his slightly down turned mouth, the elegant curve of his dark eyebrows, or the enviable bounce of his onyx sheened hair on those rare occasions he frees it form the confines of his beanie.

 

He tips the last crumbs from a packet of chips into his mouth and as he discards the empty bag notices her watching him and awkwardly wipes his mouth with his sleeve and swallows. “Betts, hey”

 

“Hey,” she responds softly wishing she’d planned out what she was going to say before finding him.

 

His eyes dart briefly away from hers. “Er,” he pushes away the remains of his lunch and makes a gesture to the seat opposite. “You wanna-“

 

“Sure”

 

“Betty, are you-“ he pauses and she can almost see him gather his courage to speak. “Are you okay? Archie said you guys broke up, I’m sorry”

 

“Are you?” she hits back immediately and he looks baffled by the sudden challenge in her voice. “Are you sorry, I mean”

 

“Betty,” his ocean blue eyes go soft, his voice is deep and sincere, and it feels like being wrapped up in a favourite blanket. “If you’re hurt then I’m sorry. You know that”

 

“And if I’m not hurt?” She asks boldly. Frankly she’s sick of dancing around everything. She’s sick of all these mixed signals. She stares him down, her hands flat and relaxed on the table, as she feels again that liberating recklessness that has driven her deep into so many ugly truths. “What if I’m not sorry? Not about that anyway”

 

“I don’t-“

 

“Understand?” She gives him a chiding sceptical look. “Yes, you do. If I’m ok with not being with Archie, then are you _really_ sorry? Be honest”

 

He looks into her eyes briefly then over her shoulder, peering at something behind her as if he’ll find the answer there.

 

“Jug?” his name on her mouth is cracked through its centre and his eyes lock with hers again in response. “Are you Jug?” she pushes. “Are you sorry?”

 

“Jesus Betty,” he whips his gaze away so jerkily it’s almost as if he’s trying to free himself from a physical restraint. “What do you want me to say?”

 

“How about whatever you said to Veronica?” she challenges, aware that her voice turns bitchy over her best friend’s name. “Say that”

 

She feels almost cruel. His expressive face is taught with an emotion she can only describe as agony and his eyes find that place over her shoulder again for a moment before he looks back at her again drawing in a deep breath and raising his shields up with it. “Betts-“

 

“Don’t ‘Betts’ me Jughead,” she snaps, she’s sick of this guarded version of him. She longs for the brave, open, vulnerable man she’d fallen for. Deep in her bones she craves that man. “I am tired of not knowing where I stand with you. I’m tired of second guessing everything you do, or I do. Why can’t we just be honest with each other?” her heart feels wide open, raw and exposed, as she adds in a whisper she’s not even sure he’ll hear. “Like we used to.”

 

“Because it’s too late” he gets up to go but she’s after him in a flash, grabbing his arm through the leather of his jacket, wishing she could feel his skin under hers instead of this cold reminder of the wedge between them.

 

“Damn it Jughead,” she hisses. “Veronica insists you still love me. I need to know if it’s true”

 

“She what?” he looks shaken and a little lost and his breath trembles audibly in the air as he meets her eyes again. She feels her face twitch unpredictably with the effort of holding back tears and he melts in response. His had reaches out as if to caress her and he murmurs “Betts,” so softly she fancies she feels it like balmy summer air against her skin more than she hears it. She sees love in his eyes a love she knows he’s harboured since they were children and for a bright moment she’s sure everything will be ok.

 

Then his expression calcifies and he turns away. He’s walking away from her just like he had that night at the Whyte Worm, the only difference is that night she’d wanted to call out and beg him not to leave her. Today she’s just plain furious.

 

“You’re a coward Jughead Jones,” she shouts after him, loudly and angrily enough to draw a few amused looks from the other students, and he stops and turns to face her.

 

She moves closer and repeats more quietly through sudden angry tears. “You’re a damn coward”

 

“Betty, I’m sor-” his voice is quiet and regretful and she knows that if she lets him finish then the sorry waiting behind his lips will sound too much like a goodbye for her to bear. So she steps forward, takes his face between her palms, the way he’s taken hers in his so many times, and kisses him.

 

Everything and nothing makes sense when his lips meet hers. He broke her heart and she thinks she broke his too and they can’t just forget that. But his mouth on hers is everything she wants, absolutely everything she needs, and the rest is only speed bumps.

 

His hands move to mirror hers and she feels so utterly connected to him that when someone wolf-whistles and he pulls away she finds herself completely – what had he once called this feeling? – unmoored.

 

He’s gone before she can register him leaving and she sits down in the still warm seat he just vacated, the debris of his forgotten lunch around her elbows as she drops her head into her hands.

 

Just moments later, as if she’d been lurking in the wings, Veronica settles opposite and tentatively asks. “Are you ok?”

 

“I thought you’d gone home”

 

“I returned,” Veronica flashes her eyes theatrically to the ceiling, playing the part of the audacious ritzy girl who blew so dramatically into Riverdale just a six months ago. “My work here isn’t quite done.”

 

Somehow, it’s more difficult to be angry with Veronica when she’s flippant and saucy than it is when she’s contrite. “Your work being?” Betty asks without even considering walking away again.

 

“Mending the rift between you and,” Veronica lifts her manicured hands and makes overtly ironic air quotes. “’The love of your life’. A rift I accept some,” her hand falls dramatically on her own chest, the dark nails contrasting with the flawless skin of her décolletage. “But only some, responsibility for”

 

“Take it up with Jughead,” she sighs. “He’s the one walking away again”

 

“Oh, don’t worry I will. But Jughead is a man and ergo an idiot”

 

She snorts her agreement at that, reluctantly amused by Veronica’s sass.

 

“I will happily go slap some sense into him right now Betty.” Veronica declares sincerely. “But only if you tell me, for certain, you’re all in.” The dark brows knit together in a worried frown. “He couldn’t take losing you again”

 

“You really care about him?” Even as she asks she’s not certain which answer she wants. Is it worse that they were just fuck buddies or that on some level at least they shared a true connection?

 

“Yes,” The reply is so quick and fierce that it seems to surprise Veronica and she pauses to take a deep breath before continuing, the words sounding more measured. “He’s my friend, Betty, _our_ friend. All I want is for him to be happy. So, tell me you’re sure and let me help fix this.”

 

The words are so seductive. To forgive Veronica and have that Lodge fire in her corner again is tempting but the next word out of the dark-haired girls mouth ruins everything. “Please”

 

‘One to beg’, she hears Cheryl’s venomous words replayed in her mind and she’s suddenly picturing the raven-haired beauty wrapped around Jughead’s body, her bold painted lips brushing his ear as she begs him. “Please”

 

She stands abruptly and goes without looking back to see Veronica’s disappointed expression. She walks straight out of the front door and through the gates with her head held high and her eyes dry. By the time she’s on her street her vision is swimming and she’s biting her lip. On the stairs, the first uncontrolled intake of breath wracks her chest and when her body hits her bed face down she’s sobbing.


	8. Be happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Betty, of course,” she says flippantly. Like it’s obvious. Like discussing his ex with his, God knows what Veronica is now, is a perfectly normal way to spend his mornings. “And how to go about ensuring your reconciliation”
> 
> Does it hurt? It shouldn’t, but he finds that it does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **throws out chapter that might get me flamed and takes cover**

**Jughead’s POV**

 

He barely sleeps that night and if not for the constant cautionary tale that is his father he thinks he’d probably be diving into a bottle of something just to get his head to stop spinning long enough for him to close his eyes without feeling nauseous.

 

Betty kissed him. Dauntless Betty, he admires her courage even as he resents it for how bright a light it shines on his own cowardice. He is a coward she was right about that. Too afraid to keep Betty close when the dangers of his life had seemed overwhelming. Too weak to face losing her without the peerless Veronica Lodge to drag him through. Too scared to let his mind linger on the truth of what he wants right now.

 

If Betty wants him back, and surely the way she’d kissed him says she does, then what does he want? All the reasons he pushed her away are fuzzy in his mind. The clarity of that night at the Whyte Wyrm blurred like a page dropped in a puddle. So many words staining its surface and yet so few still legible.

 

Perhaps it should be simple. He tells himself it is. He tells himself he doesn't know why he’s even asking himself these questions.

 

Betty was right, he is a coward.

 

He leaves the trailer late, not wanting to run into  her at school until he has at least some semblance of control over the formless indecision in his heart.

 

He evades Betty and instead finds Veronica waiting at his locker looking perfect, and perfectly poised, as always. 

 

“Jug-head” she greets, emphasising the syllables of his name in a way that reminds him fleetingly, disturbingly, of Alice Cooper. “We need to talk”

 

He looks at her askance as he opens his locker. “What about?”

 

“Betty, of course,” she says flippantly. Like it’s obvious. Like discussing his ex with his, God knows what Veronica is now, is a perfectly normal way to spend his mornings. “And how to go about ensuring your reconciliation”

 

Does it hurt? That only two days since she held him in her arms she’s so very keen to push him back into Betty’s that she’s ambushing him at her locker before class. It shouldn’t but he finds, less to his surprise than he’d admit, it really does. Maybe it’s something old, insecurities ingrained from rejections past. But he thinks maybe it’s something new. Maybe it’s not being rejected that hurts but being rejected by  _her._

 

He’s fortifying his defences, manning the walls around his heart, when her business-like expression crumbles and her eyes swim with a softness he’s been growing used to recently. “We need to fix this Jughead,” she pleads, her hand coming to grasp his forearm tightly. “Betty hates me right now, and I can see how miserable you are. I can’t just do nothing while my bestie and my,” she pauses. “While you and Betty are so unnecessarily unhappy”

 

He releases a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. She is still on his side, in his corner, and the relief that he hasn’t lost her is something he can’t find words for even in his own mind. 

 

“V,” he sighs and tries to pull his arm out of her grasp, her heat is already seeping through the thick flannel of his shirt and everything that should be clear is unclear. 

 

Rushed and unseemly as it might be to be reconcile with Betty just days after her break up with his best friend it must be what he wants. After all these weeks of pain, of missing that connection that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with truly knowing another person. He can’t imagine himself wanting anything else.

 

Yet there’s something about Veronica’s grip, something conflicted – as if her words may be sending him away but her hand is holding him back - that’s making him think things he shouldn’t. Stupid impossible things.

 

It’s crazy of course to imagine that the neediness in her gaze has anything to do with him. What she needs is Betty’s friendship, and maybe Archie’s love. Not him, how could it ever be him for a woman like her?

 

Does it hurt? It shouldn’t, but he finds that it does. 

 

“Veronica-”

 

“One of us should get to be happy Jughead,” she insists, the need turning into something steely in her eyes. “If I’m going to be this miserable then I _need_ for you to be happy”

 

He thinks of seeing her the day before while Betty had confronted him in the cafeteria, the impassive way she’d watched from the edge of the room as Betty had demanded he give her answers that should have been easy but with Veronica’s dark eyes on him had seems anything but.

 

She’s not impassive now. She’s quivering with emotion and part of him longs to comfort her. Wrap his arms around her petite frame and hold her close. But it’s been less than forty-eight hours since he was buried balls deep in her undeniably glorious body. Since those perfect painted lips, trembling now, were wrapped eagerly around his cock and he can’t imagine feeling her against him and only thinking about comforting her. 

 

_Jesus_ , he scolds himself,  _get your mind out of the gutter you jerk_ , she deserves better than that.

 

“Talk to her,” Veronica insist then she scurries away with none of her usual flourish or swagger.

 

He does talk to Betty. During lunch they find each other in the Blue and Gold office and stand awkwardly with acres of air and pain between them, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, his hands deep in the pockets of his torn jeans.

 

“Do you want to try?” she asks, her voice small and unsure. “Am I crazy to think we could try?”

 

He gropes blindly for an honest answer because it was losing honest that fucked them up in the first place. “I dunno Betts. If it doesn’t work out-”

 

“But if it does?” she comes closer then and takes his hand like she did when she first told him she wanted to know him. “I miss you Juggie. I’ve missed you so much”

 

Betty wants him back. The girl he’s loved for as long as he’s understood the ways a boy can love a girl, actually wants him back. He should be happy. Happy like he used to be, happy, the way Veronica told him he must.

 

Images of Veronica swirl mist like through his mind. He sees her ordering him back to Betty, laughing off their experimental I love yous, missing Archie the way he missed Betty. He hears her voice, relives the unequivocal order in it,  _I need you to be happy._

 

“Me too,” he murmurs and tries to ignore the confusing feeling that he’s doing this for everyone but himself as he runs his thumb over the back of her hand. “I miss you too” 

 

So, they try. Awkwardly at first and unsure around each other. Apologising senselessly when their hands brush against one another as they walk to school together every morning. Sitting side by side at Pop’s feeling miles apart. Kissing brief and chaste on the lips when they say goodnight. 

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It’s nearly three weeks after his reconciliation with Betty that he finds himself for the first time since they last made love, alone with Veronica. He’s early for one of their strained group get-togethers at Pop’s and she’s already ensconced in their usual booth scrolling through her phone. She looks up as he slips in opposite her and a warm smile dances over her lips. “Hello Jughead”

 

“Hey,” he greets. She looks lovely. She always looks lovely of course, but tonight her expression is lighter, more natural, than he’s seen it in a while and that makes his own smile broaden in response. 

 

They pause both seemingly at a loss for anything to say, just sort of grinning at each other like idiots then they speak at once. “How-”, “So-”

 

They laugh naturally together and he makes a gesture with his hand for her to speak first. 

 

“So, how are you? How’s things with Betty?”

 

“I’m good, and things are” he wants to be honest with her because they’re friends and when he was at his worst she was their burning brightly, offering and taking comfort in equal measure. He wants to pour out everything he’s been holding in these last few weeks. _Wrong,_ he wants to say, _everything’s wrong._ But she looks so invested in his answer that he doesn’t want to disappoint her. “Still awkward,” he hedges, unwilling to outright lie to her. “But improving, slowly”

 

“You’ll get there Romeo,” she says with an affectionate laugh and a strange heavy look in her eyes.

 

“What about you?” he tilts his head so that he can study her as he asks. He knows how convincing she can be when she’s pretending to be fine. “How are you doing?”

 

“Improving, slowly,” she smiles ruefully and fiddles with her napkin. “Betty and I had a girls’ night that didn’t involve any bitterness or veiled recriminations so that’s a major win and I’ve managed to hang out with Archiekins a couple of times this week too. I’m getting all my friends back”

 

“Are you and Archie,” his clears his throat, he hadn’t expected it to be this hard to force the question out. “Do you think, you guys-”

 

“No,” she cuts him of decisively. “That ship has definitely sailed”

 

If he’s relieved, and he’s not saying that he is, he thinks he does a damn poor job of hiding it because she looks amused as she wraps her lips around her straw. “Right,” he says just to fill the air with words. “Perhaps it’s for the best. I love Arch but he’s-”

 

“Kind of a fuck boy?” she interjects perkily when he struggles for an adjective.

 

“What? No, he just-”

 

“I’m teasing,” she leans over and lays her warm hand over his, smirking at his discomfort before continuing more seriously. “Archie’s a wonderful guy. I loved him and I know he loved me. But I think, I don’t know, maybe he got over me too easily”

 

He frowns in concern and lays his free hand over hers, sandwiching her soft delicate fingers between his larger rougher ones. “Vero-”

 

“I’m fine,” her lips form a breezy smile that seems designed specifically to ease his concern. “Maybe I got over him a little too easily too.” 

 

He wouldn’t have thought anything of her words if she hadn’t gone immediately wide eyed. She doesn’t blush, Veronica Lodge is really not the blushing type, but her composure flickers for a second and she tugs her hand harshly from his grip. “I just mean,” she continues too quickly, a little too casually. “I’m fine now, that’s all”

 

“Ok,” his heart is pounding in his chest and he doesn’t know why but he knows he doesn’t trust his voice with more than those two clipped syllables.

 

“Betty,” Veronica greets bombastically and he startles, feeling inexplicably guilty as he turns to watch his girlfriend make her way towards them. “Wow,” Veronica trails her eyes appreciatively over the blonde. “Girl, you look gorgeous.”

 

Betty does look good. With the weather finally improving she’s shed her customary sweater for a crisp figure hugging blouse and her skinny jeans for a neat pencil skirt. She looks older and more sophisticated; more woman tonight than girl and the thought makes him nervous in a way he can’t explain. Perhaps it’s the look she gives him, full of shy promise, that sets his alarm bells ringing or the way she slips in next to him and presses her thigh against his. “Thanks V”

 

By the time they’re walking home her intent is clear as day and he’s almost ready to bolt. She slips her hand into his as they climb the steps to her front door.

 

“Mom and dad are away until tomorrow night,” she tells him with coquettish smile. “You could stay”

 

There is no reason to refuse. None that makes sense to him and certainly none he could share with her. So, he follows her inside and lets her lead him by the hand up the stairs and into her pretty girlish bedroom.

 

She’s nervous, her fingers tremble slightly as she steps away and starts unbuttoning her blouse.  _Christ,_ he thinks as he stands dumbly by her dresser _,_ what the fuck is he supposed to do now?

 

Her movements halt and her expression turns doubtful and unsure. He has to get it together he thinks, Betty doesn’t deserve to feel anything less than confident and desirable right now. He pushes down all the doubts swirling incoherently in his head and steps towards her.  _Be happy_ he orders himself firmly and lets his eyes lingering on her half open blouse. “Don’t you dare stop” he warns teasingly and she relaxes and giggles as her fingers resume their work exposing, inch by creamy inch, her perfect skin.

 

He runs his hands up her arms and hooks his fingers of the open edges of her blouse so he can slide it lingeringly off her shoulders. The skin of her décolletage is fair and flawless, so much paler than-

 

And there it is. The reason he doesn’t want to do this. Veronica still feels far too close. With barely any effort he can conjure the soft feeling of her breasts in his palms, the scent of her skin, the hot wet trap of her pussy. More often than he should, he does. When he lies alone on his bed late at night and wraps his hand around his cock it’s Veronica, not Betty, that lies beside him whispering wicked encouragements into his ear. 

 

For so long he’d been certain Betty would be his first, that everything he understood about sex he’d learn with her. He never once imagined having any point of reference, let alone one as emphatically sexy as Veronica Lodge and if he thinks of Veronica when he jerks off in the dark then he’s afraid he might think of her when he makes love to Betty. That thought, a betrayal of both of them, makes him nauseous with guilt.

 

Betty turns her head to kiss him and she’s so nervous, but so hopeful, that he can’t refuse her.  _Be happy._ He cups her face and deepens the kiss and focuses his mind on how good she tastes and how beautiful she is.

 

He thinks later that it might have been easier to keep Veronica out of his thoughts if the two of them had been more similar. But the contrast is so stark his mind repeatedly disobeys him and lingers on all the differences that go far beyond the light and dark of them.

 

When Betty shyly lies down on the bed with her knees together and her lip between her teeth he pictures Veronica as she’d been on the last night they spent together, coming down from her orgasm, wantonly spread on her parents’ expensive couch as he’d crawled up her body with the taste of her pussy on his mouth. 

 

Betty’s delicate hums and sighs of pleasure. The breathless, ‘Oh Juggie’ that floats with petal like softness from her mouth trigger his treacherous mind to replay the husky litanies of praise and promise, of pleading and demand, that spewed in nonsensical waves from Veronica’s. The graphic urgent ‘fuck me hard’ commands, the ‘Christ please, like that’ entreaties.

 

He tries to push Veronica away and focus on Betty as he makes her come with his fingers on her clit and his mouth on her neck, but her simpered, “wow,” just doesn’t reverberate through his blood the way Veronica hissed curses of appreciation always did.

 

She opens her legs for him then, looking expectant and lip bitingly nervous. There’s a wrongness swimming in his gut, a churn of regret that pushes nausea up his throat and makes him want to run far away but there’s  also voice in his head that sounds like Veronica that’s telling him to man up and make Betty happy.  _Be happy,_ he tells himself, the words becoming the mantra with which he battles the sucking wrongness.  _For Christ’s sake be happy._

 

He slips into her hesitantly and tries not to think about the heart-stopping sensation of completeness he’d felt everytime he buried himself smoothly in Veronica.

 

The condom, one Betty had produced blushingly from her nightstand, is strange too, dulling the sensation and putting Betty, he thinks ridiculously, at a disadvantage. He hates himself for that shameful thought, hates that even for a second in his mind he’s comparing them that way. It’s not a competition and he’s no fucking prize that’s for sure.

 

He rolls on to his back so she’s above him wanting her to feel in control, confident and sexy. She smiles down at him tenderly and he forces his uneasy mind to remember how much he adores her and just how long he’s loved her. She rides him eagerly and he lays his hands chastely on her hips and lets her explore the sensations. But as her excitement builds it throws her rhythm off, her movements becoming jerky and awkward. She gives a frustrated little whine and her face pinches with worry. “Sorry”

 

“Hey,” he sits up and takes her tenderly in his arms, one hand on her shoulder the other on her hip, guiding the pace and angle of her thrusts until he feels her start to build, her pussy clenching and unclenching around him her breath coming in halting gasps as she cums.

 

He holds her in the circle of his arms and kisses her neck softly. “Ok?” he mumbles and she nods.

 

“Yes, wow, I- Did you-?”

 

He nuzzles at her ear gently. “No, it’s ok”

 

“I’m sorr-”

 

He doesn’t want her to apologise so he cuts her off with a kiss and rolls her onto her back without pulling out of her. “You‘re so beautiful” he tells her and means it. With her golden hair and flushed skin she is captivating by an standards. She gives a sweet shy smile and he finds himself at a loss for what to do next.

 

With Veronica stopping wouldn’t even have been a question, she’d have already been eagerly grinding up against him as he hooked her leg over his shoulder, looming over her dominant and demanding. But with Betty he feels endlessly patient, his own need a distant inconsequential thing. 

 

Perhaps he’s the biggest difference of all. He’s soft and sweet and unhurried. He can’t imagine any universe in which he’d turn Betty over and tug painfully on her hair so that her back arches as he pounds into her from behind. Where he’d pin her hips and bite her breast as he pours himself into her.

 

“Do you want to stop?” he whispers.

 

She shakes her head and strokes his face with delicate loving brushes of her fingertips. “No, Juggie. I want you to,” she fumbles for the word. “Enjoy yourself too”

 

He wishes that, like a woman, he could fake it and have this over. But Betty is looking at him expectantly with hazy love clouded eyes so he starts to move again inside her and tells her the only thing he’s certain is true in the mass of contradictions in his head. “I love you”

 

She glows warmly in response. “I love you too”

 

He makes sure she cums again just before he spills lazily into the latex confines of the condom with a groan. She giggles lightly and snuggles close to him. “Hmmm,” she murmurs contentedly, “That was amazing.” 

 

He rolls onto his back and snuggles her under his arm so he can stare unobserved at the ceiling while he tries to expunge the illogically guilty feeling churning like filthy water in his gut.

 

The patterns she traces on his chest are gossamer soft and her lips are warm against his skin as he half feels, half hears the “I love you” she murmurs into the skin directly above his heart. He clamps down hard on the disconcerting sensation buzzing in his head, that familiar short circuit of his troubled mind. He clings to a truth almost as old as he is and, as he replies in kind into her hair and beats back the contrasting image of Veronica pushing him impatiently off and hurriedly straightening her clothes. “You’re a hell of a fuck Jones,” she’d told him that day somehow managing to sound impressed and affectionate and yet at once mildly resentful. “A hell of a fuck”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a plan, I promise I have a plan and it's Jeronica coloured! But I love angst and I seem a little addicted to making it hard for them.
> 
> Also I think that given that cannon Jughead is seriously crazy for Betty unpicking that and veronica-izing him has got to be messy and painful for everyone or it won't ring true.
> 
> I also feel bad for Betty, I don't like what I'm doing to her or what i have planned for her but she's the egg in my Jeronica flavoured omelette I'm afraid


	9. Innocent-ish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kelvin’s eyes go wide with gleeful humour and realisation. “Oh. My. God. Jughead Jones is a sex prodigy? Really?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the reviews, i feared the flames for the bughead sex in the last chapter but got lovely feedback. Kisses for all

**Veronica’s POV**

 

Veronica lingers with Archie in Pop’s for about an hour after Betty claims tiredness and she and Jughead leave together hand in hand. She knows Betty well enough to know that with her parents out of town it isn’t tiredness that prompted this early exit.

 

The thought of Betty and Jughead finally taking their relationship to the next level is something she’s been working very hard at accepting. They are happy she tells herself firmly whenever the now familiar sourness swirls in her belly. They are happy and that’s what matters.

 

Archie awkwardly tells her he’s thinking of asking Susanna White from the year above them out on a date. He won’t though, he says, if it’s a problem for her.

 

“Dear Archibald,” she replies fondly, touched by his concern for her feelings. “You are a truly precious soul. Please do by all means ask the lady out with my blessing. Just don’t neglect your friends when you’re caught in the first flush ok”

 

“Thanks V,” he smiles bashfully and she remembers at once why she loved him and yet, now that the dust has settled, she is more than content to be merely friends. He is charming and, beneath the obliviousness and the frequent gaffs, he is genuinely considerate and unflinchingly forgiving. But he is also young in a way she hasn’t been in years. In a way she thinks Jughead may never have been. He is as bright and warm and wonderful as the summer days that will fade with the coming of autumn and pass away into the fondness of memory. He is, in essence, a high school boyfriend and one she knows she’ll look back on from adulthood with genuine affection.

 

She tells Archie with total sincerity that she wants to hear all about how it goes with Susanna and when they move to part addresses, for the first time, the ever-shrinking elephant in the room with them. “I am sorry Archie, about how it all went down with me and Jughead and Betty. You got the crappy end of everything and you’ve been truly amazing about it”

 

He shrugs looking magnanimous in the face of her gratitude. “It sucked,” he admits. “Betty used me and you and Jug went behind my back. Honestly it hurt. But in the end, you guys are my best friends, I didn’t want to lose any of you over it”

 

Warmth fills her chest and she smiles and squeezes his bicep. “A precious soul,” she says again before standing on tiptoes to plant a sisterly kiss on his cheek.

 

She watches him go and tries to remember how it felt to have her heart broken by him. It must have hurt. It was that pain after all that drove her, drunk and reckless, into Jughead’s arms. She remembers that seeing him with Betty had hurt, but every memory she has of that pain is dimmed now by the memory of having shared it. Betty and Archie blur in the background of her recollections while held in sharp unfading focus at their centre is Jughead, his eyes finding hers in silent promise to share this suffering and make it less.

 

How different it feels watching Betty with Jughead. Jealous she may be. Grieving, even, over losing whatever it was that she and Jughead shared, but she’s not hiding from her pain this time.

 

She cradles it, a secret precious treasure held alongside the knowledge that he is happy, that he has the love he deserves. It beats in time with her aching stalwart heart, keeping it from breaking, making it stronger.

 

Perhaps she has finally grown into a better person. Perhaps this, she thinks, is the feel of something truly unconditional.

 

The next morning at school she’s distracted before first period by Cheryl who drags her into a senseless argument about River Vixen choreography that she knows she can’t win and yet somehow can’t quite bring herself to simply yield. She doesn’t see her friends until a break after second period when she walks out into the yard to see Betty and Kevin whispering together at one of the tables.

 

“Hey,” she greets chirpily as she approaches and Betty blushes red and responds with a stiff excuse that she has to see Wetherbee and flees.

 

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks Kevin as she takes Betty’s seat. “Or I mean anything new”

 

Kevin looks ready to burst and she knows he’s sitting on what he considers great gossip. “Is it because she had sex with Jughead?” she asks.

 

“She told you?” Kevin looks disappointed but she doesn’t correct the assumption, perhaps if Kevin thinks Betty has opened up to her about it, he’ll spill a few details himself.

 

“So why the bail?” She asks instead. “She doesn’t think I’d be mad, does she?”

 

“No, she’s just up in her head about you popping his cherry,” Kevin shrugs, he clearly thinks Betty’s over reacting. “She’ll get over it.”

 

“Ok,” she’s nods thinking about how she can handle Betty’s insecurities when Kevin’s words register fully in her mind. “Wait? What? I didn’t. He wasn’t a virgin.” Kevin lifts an eyebrow and she continues. “Honestly Kev, that could not have been his first time.”

 

“Betty’s pretty sure he was,” Kelvin’s eyes go wide with gleeful humour and realisation. “Oh. My. God. Jughead Jones is a sex prodigy? Really?”

 

“Kevin!” she scolds although with the weight that’s settled on her friendships recently his waggish irreverence is refreshing.

 

Kevin looks unrepentant. “I need details,” he enthuses. “Any advance on Betty’s three orgasm first time high score”

 

She can’t help but twitch her lips a little at that, it feels so good to be silly with Kevin. It feels good too, to talk about her time with Jughead without shame or recrimination. “Hmm,” she muses. “Maybe I did teach him some moves, I only got two”

 

Kevin gasps theatrically. “An actual sex prodigy. Any chance he’s bi do you think?”

 

She laughs and slaps Kevin’s arm. “It’s not funny Kev, I can’t believe he was a virgin, I feel awful. I’m a sleazy predator, poor Jughead”

 

“So? You stamped his v-card.” Kevin wave a had dismissively. “It’s really not as big of a deal as you girls make out”

 

“I didn’t stamp his v-card Kev,” she tells and runs her hands through her hair in agitation. “I decimated it. First in a whiskey fuelled blur and then repeatedly in seedy school closet hook ups.”

 

Kevin is just far too amused by the whole thing so she stands, flips him off with a fond exasperated smile and heads to class.

 

She finds Jughead, predictably, lurking in the Blue and Gold office during fifth period munching his way through a bag of chips that was definitely packaged with sharing in mind and idly typing one handed on his laptop.

 

When she pokes her head around the door his small smile brightens his eyes but fails to give her a glimpse of those slightly goofy front teeth that somewhere along their journey from friends adjacent to lovers and back again she’s decided are really quite sexy. “Hey, can we talk?”

 

His smile evaporates and a frown pinches between his brows as he stands and comes towards her, his gaze running up and down her body as if checking for physical damage. “You ok?”

 

“Yeah, it’s just-” she trails off, there’s really no way to build up naturally to the question she needs to ask him so she figures she may as well jump in with both feet. “Were you a virgin Jughead? Was I your first?”

 

He shrugs, perhaps it is just girls that let this stuff bother them, he certainly seems unconcerned. “Yeah”

 

“Jesus Jughead,” his nonchalance, whether real or feigned, irks her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“It didn’t occur to me that it mattered.”

 

“Of course it mattered. Your first time shouldn’t have been drunken revenge sex with me,” she places her hand lightly on his cheek to check interruption forming on his mouth. “You deserved better. I’m so sorry”

 

His hand comes to cover hers, cradling it against the light stubble on his jaw. “I’m not,” he says softly.

 

She gives him a sceptical look. Surely, he wishes it had been Betty and some magical coming together of soulmates straight out of the kind of movie she knows he hates.

 

“I’m not,” he repeats more firmly. “Listen,” he ducks down to catch eye. “Hey. It, us, it was messy and painful sure, but it was real. Wasn’t it?”

 

She lifts her head to hold his gaze more intently and nods, god yes it was real. As desperate and drunk and secret as it was, it _was_ real.

 

Jughead’s hand is still over hers on his cheek. His thumb runs back and forth lightly over her fingers and he moves closer so there's only a few scant inches between them. “I imagine people go their whole lives and never share an understanding that complete. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but I don’t regret, I’ll never regret, that it was you Veronica.”

 

She feels herself sag a little with a noisy exhalation of relief. Her hand is still on his cheek making her arm ache slightly but she can’t bear to release the feel of his skin beneath her palm.

 

The unconditional resolve of her heart flickers in blue grey spotlight of his gaze. She pulls away and puts the distance between them that will give her better self a chance to hold sway.

 

“No harm no foul then I guess,” she says trying to manufacture a teasing playful tone. “From what I hear this morning you and Betty are definitely putting the past behind you”

 

He looks up with troubled, guilty eyes. “V, I-”

 

“I’m glad things are going so great with you two. And that your happy?” she’d meant to make it a statement but her voice rises just enough to turn her words into a question and once it’s out there she has to wait for his answer with a band tightening around her chest. _Tell me your happy,_ her heart begs into pregnant air between them. _Tell me I’ve been able to make you happy, even if it was just by getting out of the god damn way._

His face is taught and his voice cracks a little over the “Sure” he finally addresses to a point just over her left shoulder. “Yeah of course”

 

“Good”

 

They fall into an awkward silence that lasts far too long for either of their comfort and during which she sees his mouth open fractionally more than once before snapping shut again _._ Eventually she gives up on waiting for him to speak and simply nods and turns to leave.

 

“Veronica,” her name sounds slightly urgent as he uses it to stop her with her hand on the door knob but when she looks at him over her shoulder he’s shuffling his feet and swallowing hard. “I miss you,” he mumbles barely loud enough for her to hear, and when her face registers her surprise quickly clarifies. “As a friend, you know. I miss hanging out”

 

She should be relieved, but maybe she’s disappointed, as she plasters on her best smile. “Yes, we should definitely hang out,” she says because if she doesn’t say that she’ll end up telling him she misses him too and there’s too much risk he’ll be able to tell that she doesn’t mean as friends.

 

Missing him, she’s found these last few weeks, comes in unpredictable waves. Sometimes, mostly, it’s a dull sort of ache in the centre of her chest that, late at night, just like the sprained ankle she’d once gained falling from the pyramid back at Spence, throbs in time with her heart beat. Other times it sinks down upon her like a blanket of melancholia that leaves her staring blankly out of her bedroom window thinking about all the things she’ll never do with him; the things she hadn’t realise she’d wanted to do with him until it was too late.

 

Lastly, mercifully rarely, it feels like a parasite has crawled into her gut. The same type that turn ants into tree climbing zombies. Though her parasite’s goal is not a high branch but something far more treacherous. _Take him,_ it whispers in a voice too reminiscent of her father’s. _A Lodge always gets what they want._

 

Late that night when she leans over to her night stand to check the time on her phone, that same voice speaks in innocent cajoling tones. _Just as friends,_ it suggests. _There’s nothing wrong with being friends._

She sends a text she doubts will fool him - it certainly doesn’t fool her - asking if he’s reading Love in the Time of Cholera for English.

She’s barely begun her descent into regret at sending it when her phone beeps.

 

 _Unfortunately not. We’re for soothing our way through Hamlet right now. You like it?_ The message reads next to the blank silhouette her phone supplies for contacts who haven’t been assigned a photo in her address book.

 

 _Does hating every single page of it make me a philistine?_ She fires back and spends a few moments looking through her photo album for a picture of Jughead to attach to his contact card. She doesn’t have one, not a single picture of his face she can use, and that feels like a reality check. A metaphorical confirmation that they were never really that important to one another.

 

Then her phone’s buzzing at her. Green and red buttons under a pale blue silhouette and his name, misspelled from back when she’d still been the new girl and had simply assumed it was two separate words.

 

Her thumb hovers over the red button for a split second before it swings right and answers the call. “Hey”

“Unacceptable Lodge” he opens without preamble. “And yes, yes it definitely makes you a philistine, possibly even a barbarian.”

 

She laughs at his indignation and tells him she knows it’s a masterpiece but she just can’t stand the utter self-indulgence of the Florentino. “Sometimes shit doesn’t work out, get over it”

 

“Eloquent,” She can see him in her mind rolling his eyes. “I can’t wait to read your book report”

 

“I won’t phrase it like that, obviously”

 

She should cut the call there she thinks, but she doesn’t, she lies back on her bed and argues with him until her limbs feel heavy and her eyelids droop.

 

Eventually the need to sleep defeats her and she can’t form anything more intelligent in response to his assertion that “it’s the encapsulation of love as both idealised and depraved within Florentino that makes his character compelling” than “He was a jerk”

 

Jughead laughs huskily into the phone. “Good night Veronica”

 

“Night,” she murmurs in response and turns onto her side, phone still in hand, as she falls asleep.

 

They don’t talk about their conversation in school the next day. As usual they share nothing more than air. They sit at the opposite corners of their little friendship square, avoiding speaking directly to one another. Avoiding eye contact. Avoiding any interaction that will make Betty’s mouth tighten the way it had a week or so after she and Jughead had reconciled when, without looking directly at her, Jughead had wordlessly slipped a hand under Veronica’s arm to steal a large handful of fries from her plate.

 

That night though, while she’s brushing her teeth, his name decorates the front screen of her phone beneath the cartoonish image of a three-pointed crown she’s spent more minutes than she’d care to admit scouring google images for. The message is nothing note-worthy, a complaint about Shakespeare, perfectly innocent and extremely dangerous.

 

She should definitely not reply.

 

She should definitely not back and forth with him until almost midnight.

 

She should definitely not feel the need to delete the conversation, innocent as it was, like some trampy cheater afraid her best friends will accidentally catch a glimpse of it.

 

She wonders if he deletes his too or if she’s creating something illicit out of something innocent.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three days and dozens of late night texts later Mr Whitley looks out over his Chemistry class and barks an order for the students to pair up.

 

Kevin, from his place seated beside her, shares a look with Moose that makes her grin knowingly. “Understood,” she tells him and gives an encouraging shove to the small of the back, hoping he’ll be too distracted by the bulge of his partners biceps to notice her slipping to the back of the class.

 

“Hey,” she settles beside Jughead and turns her attention, without waiting for his reply, to their teacher as he explains the experiment he wants the pairs to perform.

 

“So,” Jughead chuckles as she proficiently documents the chemical reactions and the colours of the precipitates they form. “Veronica Lodge is a scientist. No wonder you can’t appreciate Márquez.” He faux gasps. “Do the Vixen’s know about this?”

 

“Please,” she smirks and looks at him sideways. “I have some experience at hiding these things”

 

“I won’t tell, _if_ ,” he draws out the word. “You stay right there and help me pass chem”

 

She makes a show of considering. “Ok, but I may need some insights for my book report in exchange”

 

“Indeed you do. ‘He’s a jerk’ isn’t actually considered literary criticism you know”

 

She elbows him in the ribs and he bashes his knee against hers under the desk. Somewhere in her mind alarm bells have started up a riotous clanging of warning but she can’t hear them over the gruff sound of his laughter in her ear.


	10. An accidental touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t,” he clenches his jaw against the frustration he feels at her evasiveness . “You know what, in the library, you, holding my hand for Christ's sake”
> 
> “Jughead,” she rubs her forehead tiredly with her thumb and forefinger. “Can we please not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow i got the best comments on the last chapter thanks so much x

**Joghead’s POV**

Texting Veronica is only technical innocent, he knows that. Every night when he erases their conversation he tells himself it’s not because he’s doing anything wrong - talking about books and school isn’t wrong after all - it’s just that Betty might take it the wrong way, and he doesn’t want to upset her.

 

If he’d heard the same argument from Archie he’d have called the behaviour ‘classic fuck-boy’.  But Veronica always answers and he always smiles when she does and is it really so wrong to send a few platonic text messages?

 

When she takes up residence next to him in chemistry he doesn’t tell Betty about the new seating arrangement. It’s no big deal, he reasons, it’s just class.

 

But if it were no big deal then, surely, he could tell her. If it were no big deal he imagines he’d have had sex with Betty more than once again after their first time over a week before. He has reasons for that too of course: her family and his gang, so much drama so little time.

 

Other than the time he makes to message Veronica late at night.

 

Cognitive dissonance, it appears, is more than just a psychological theory.

 

Eventually even self-delusion fails to him with the arrival of, of all unlikely things, science week and a team project that has him sitting at a table in the school library opposite Moose and Kevin trying to focus on the conversation and not the black-haired beauty at his side or the blonde he really hopes doesn't walk in right now.

 

He and Moose it turns out, to no one’s great surprise, are not much use for this project. But Kevin, like Veronica, is surprisingly capable and enthusiastic. He’s not paying too much attention to the conversation when Veronica’s hand drops down onto the seat beside her accidentally brushing his with her little finger,

 

She tenses almost imperceptibly but she doesn’t withdraw her hand. So, he doesn’t either. Instead he leans slightly forward, so his other elbow is on the table and his body shadows the space between them where their hands lie, and pretends to listen to Kevin explain the nature of an exothermic reaction to Moose.

 

Perhaps he could use the feel of Veronica’s pinky pressed against his as an example. There are certainly sparks spreading out from that tiny point of contact to ignite a million tiny bonfires just beneath his skin.

 

Veronica joins the explanation just as her finger begins to move up and down against his in a tentative caress that could still, just about, be accidental. He presses back lightly mirroring her movements so that their little fingers slide almost indiscernible against one another.

 

He tries to act naturally despite the sudden thundering of his heart. He makes a terrible pun about being in their element that even he doesn’t think is funny as she finally abandons any pretense and slips her finger fully over his to hook around it. Like a pinky swear made by children. A juvenile promise of something entirely adult.

 

She keeps talking to Kevin and Moose, her expression relaxed and natural, free hand flicking her hair from her face or toying with her pearls as she wriggles her fingers underneath his and turns her hand over so that their fingers tangle and their palms press together.

 

Christ, he can’t imagine his poker face is a patch on hers. She’s holding his hand, her thumb brushing lightly back and forth over his, and his heart is ricocheting about in his chest like a jumping bean.

 

He nods along with something Kevin suggests and tries not to keep repeatedly swallowing despite the dryness in his mouth. There’s something about this forbidden, secret, touch that makes his skin tingle and his jeans tighten. At least, he thinks with wry amusement, the blood that’s rushing south at her touch isn’t humiliating him with a school girl blush across his cheeks.

 

When Kevin stands they tear their hands guiltily apart and he drags his messenger bag into his lap, avoiding eye contact with the group and pretending to look for something inside. Hopefully his lack of response to their goodbyes will be interpreted as just his usual sullenness.

 

Putting distance between himself and Veronica may calm the riotous beating of his heart but in the silence left behind, when she leaves the library and that deafening boom boom boom of adulterous desire finally subsides, the question of her motives is far too loud to be ignored.

 

He physically drags her into the Blue and Gold Office when Betty’s in French and he should be in English Lit. Her slim bicep feeling fragile under his brutish grip.

 

“What the hell was that Veronica?” he demands in a low hiss.

 

“What?”

 

“Don’t,” he clenches his jaw against the frustration he feels at her evasiveness . “You know what, in the library, you, holding my hand for Christ's sake”

 

“Jughead,” she rubs her forehead tiredly with her thumb and forefinger. “Can we please not?”

 

“No,” he snaps, frustration with her and his own pathetic need for an explanation stirring up a swell of anger in his belly. “We can’t fucking not. Tell me what the hell that was in there.”

 

“It was nothing Jughead,” that same tired tone, like he’s the one being unreasonable for asking her these questions, like he doesn’t have every right to know why the woman who made it so painfully clear that their fling was just that and nothing more felt the need to wrap her fingers in his. “A never to be repeated moment of weakness”

 

“Weakness. Why?” he’s persists doggedly. “What possible weakness could make you do that?”

 

“Jesus Jughead,” her weariness snaps with irritation. “Don’t be obtuse.”

 

“I don’t understand,” the fight goes out of him, his voice cracks and his eyes plead with her for some approximation of honesty.

 

“I’m trying Jughead,” her voice drops and its more now than simple weariness in her gaze, there’s defeat too, a dejected resignation that he’s never seen on her before. “But I’m not a hundred percent good person and I stumbled today ok. I was weak and sometimes I just miss,” a deep broken sigh and a final whispered confession. “I miss your skin”

 

He feels sick.  There’s a very real chance he’s actually going to throw up on her expensive shoes at any moment. What’s she even saying? That there’s still some lust there? Is that all? At night when her replies come so swiftly that the buzzing of his phone is a near constant sound in the quiet of his father’s trailer, is that weakness too? For what then, for his words? for him?

 

“I miss yours too” he settles on a response that’s at once honest and slightly disingenuous. Her skin is, after all, not all he misses.

 

Her lips part in response and the shuddering breath she takes makes her breast rise and fall, straining as they do against the thin silk of her blouse. “Don’t”

 

If she hadn’t begged, if that one word hadn’t been so clearly a plea for mercy, he thinks he never would have been so bold. But her weakness is his strength and, stepping forward, he lifts a hand as if to touch her face, diverting the movement at the last minute to lay his palm against the wall at her side.

 

“I miss the smell of it just behind your ear,” he whispers leaning in to inhale the familiar scent of her expensive perfume. “The feel of it under my hands”

 

“Jughead,” his name, a warning, a rebuke, an entreaty.

 

“Smooth on your calf,” he glances down at her heaving chest, there’s no hiding the effect he’s having on her and that thought has him already hard in his jeans. “Rougher over your knee,” he leans closer feeling paradoxically both powerful at the sight of her reaction to him and yet utterly powerless; a puppet of her beauty and of his own lurid memories. “Like silk on the inside of your thigh”

 

“Christ Jughead,” he body jolts a little and she throws her head back against the wall and closes her eyes tight.

 

“I can’t touch you,” as he says it he knows it’s true, no matter how much the nerves on his palms tick with the desire to run over her body.

 

“I know,” she breaths out relief and disappointment which seem to settle directly in his own lungs. “You’re not that guy”

 

“And you’re not that girl”

 

Her eyes hold equal measures of sadness and gratitude. “I’m trying not to be and Betty is my _best_ friend”

 

His arms are still caging her against the wall, but he doesn’t free her just yet. He leans his head forward beside hers until he feels cool brick beneath his forehead and makes his own confession. “I want to”

 

“Please don’t Jughead,” she’s trembling, her body’s only inches away from his and he can feel the vibrations. Like a beehive of desire buzzing angrily under her skin. “I’m not very good at not taking what I want”

 

“You didn’t want me Veronica,” he reminds her as he pulls back, because this is the truth on which he’s based the freefall of his life. This is the push behind his kamikaze leap back to Betty. “You sent me away”

 

The crack in his voice is humiliating and he feels defensive when she gives him her justification. “You love Betty. I just wanted you to be happy”

 

He snorts. “Well congratulations,” he pushes off the wall and lets anger beat back the sinking misery of these shitty pointless feelings. “Because I’m really fucking miserable Veronica.”

 

He ditches school. Text’s Betty to say he can’t come over later with a vague _something came up_ that he’s fairly confident she’ll interpret, resentfully no doubt, as serpent business. He immediately feels like crap for the snide thought. Betty’s been nothing but accepting of his ongoing embroilment in his father’s gang. More accepting than he’s been of her recent attempts to find her long lost brother.

 

“It’s a bad idea Betts, whoever he is he’s been in the system for years, he could be dangerous.” he’d told her when she’d first began her search, ignoring the hypocrisy that half the people who could claim his loyalty for nothing more than bearing a matching tattoo had grown up in exactly the same trap.

 

“He’s my brother,” she’d said as if that simple link of DNA would be enough to turn strangers into siblings.

 

“Just be careful, ok, you don’t know this guy. I don’t want you to be hurt, or disappointed”

 

She’d tenderly touched his face. “I love you” she’d told him and he’d pulled her close and said it back, the way he always does these days, into the skin of her neck. Because for all that it’s true, he thinks it will always on some level be true, he’s afraid that if he looks into her eyes she’ll see the doubt behind the words.

 

He doesn’t text Veronica that night and she doesn’t text him. Not that he’d expected her to, but it’s been a while since he last fell asleep without first re-reading the _sleep tight xx_ she always sends when one or other of them finally acknowledges that they need sleep to function. The little Xs had appeared after a few nights of texting and he remembers how he’d stared at them for a full five minutes trying to decide if they meant anything before finally deleting the conversation. He wishes now he had just one of those messages saved.

 

The school days come and go after that. Lunchtime with the gang, brief conversations with Veronica in the cafeteria; carefully neutral whether Betty’s with them or not. Chemistry project work always sitting opposite and not beside her and addressing his ideas to Kevin.

 

By night there’s radio silence. He checks the screen of his phone every few minutes despite knowing full well there are no message on it and hates himself for being such a fool.

 

Betty’s search for her brother intensifies and he dutifully takes up her cause. They scour community records, and newspaper archives in an attempt to find the boy who fell through the wide cracks in the welfare system a decade ago.

 

Honestly, despite his misgivings about the search, working with Betty is the best part of his day. It’s familiar, energising in a way that reminds him of their hunt for Jason Blossom’s killer. He feels almost like Jughead again when he’s part of the Betty and Jughead investigation team.

 

Certainly, he’s more Jughead then than when he rides his motorcycle to the Wyrm and hangs with the Serpents. He’s far more Jughead chasing leads with Betty over in Centerville than he is when she climbs into his lap and kisses him. When she coaxes him out of his clothes and moans her appreciation as he slips inside her he thinks he’s barely Jughead at all.

 

A week or so later at lunch he’s concentrating very hard on the ham sandwich Betty made for him that morning and trying to ignore the way the eyeroll he’d just shared with Veronica at Archie’s gushing over his date with Susanna had made him feel more Jughead than he has in weeks.

 

Just then Susanna appears, as if conjured by Archie’s enthusiasm, with a Senior in a Letterman jacket who he has a vague notion is named Andrew beside her. Susanna, who is sweet and bubbly and actually a very good match for Archie, introduces the boy as Andy and he raises a hand in greeting to the group.

 

“Hi,” he notices the way Andy’s looking nervously at Veronica and returns his attention with sullen determination to his sandwich. “Hi Veronica, I was wondering- Would you like to come out with me on Friday”

 

Veronica doesn’t have time to answer before Susanna interjects. “We were thinking maybe you guys would like to join Archie and I, a little double date, maybe a movie or bowling”

 

There’s a roaring in his ears that drowns out much of the conversation after that. A raucous call for action thundering in his blood.

 

Veronica makes a non-committal noise that isn’t even close to the scathing refusal he wants to hear from her. He risks a quick glance at her, hiding the movement from Betty by pretending to scratch the side of his head. Veronica’s smiling coquettishly in a pretense of coyness that doesn't fool anyone. “I will consider it. A movie, Veronica Lodge does not bowl”

 

“You gonna come Ronnie?” Archie asks when Andy and Susanna leave. “It’ll be fun”

 

“You _need_ to go,” Kevin gushes. “Andy’s on the wrestling team and believe me that boy is cut like marble”

 

“You should definitely go V,” Betty joins in the encouragement. “I mean why not”

 

“Yes,” she smiles and flicks her hair. If she’s feeling reluctant she’s hiding it well. But then she always was a great actress. “Why not indeed”

 

He laser focuses on his own hands, concentrating on not letting this impotent jealousy turn his grip on his sandwich into a strangle hold. _Do something_ his mind rages at him, _do, fucking, something._

He takes a bite of his sandwich.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are these two at breaking point? spoiler alert: yes, yes they are. Tune in next time for the snap ;-)


	11. Snap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I don’t care,” he presses closer, eyes finally finding hers. “Veronica don’t go out with him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow thank so much for the comments. We also passed 300 kudos which i am so excited about (although I am wondering if most of those were just rickstheraven logging out and smashing it as guest. If so then I'm still taking them xx)
> 
> Hope you enjoy this

**Veronica’s POV**

 

“You should definitely go V,” Betty smiles warmly as the group cajoles her towards a date with Andy the, apparently, ‘cut like marble’ wrestler. “I mean why not?”

 

There’s more than friendly encouragement in Betty’s tone, there’s a hint too – although this could possibly be the imaginings of her guilty mind - of challenge.

 

“Yes,” She flicks her hair, the movement camouflaging a quick glance at Jughead. She’s not sure what she’s looking for but she suspects it wouldn’t take much more than a furrowed brow or down-turned mouth, any tiny indication that he cared, and she’d refuse.

 

Jughead doesn’t frown, or glance at her with dissuadeful eyes. _Give me something_ she thinks, _anything_. But he’s too busy eating his lunch to even look at her. Betty’s questioning gaze however doesn’t leave her so she smiles even brighter. “Why not indeed”

 

The date is set for the following Saturday, a double date with Archie - which should be weird but somehow isn’t for either of them - and Susanna to see a movie at the Bijou and grab a burger at Pop’s.

 

 _It’ll be fun_ she tells herself when she finds herself dreading spending an evening making conversation with a boy she doesn’t know. She used to relish the first date; the chance to shine, to be admired by brand new eyes.

 

Lately the only eyes she’s wanted on her have been pointedly averted. Does he even care? In the office of the Blue and Gold a few weeks ago he’d hovered close to her and, in a voice laden with regret and hoarse with desire, told her that he wanted to touch her.

 

Perhaps that was all it was. A momentary outpouring of lust, perhaps he’s over it, he’d certainly seems unconcerned by her upcoming date. Archie has mentioned it often, Betty too is constantly bringing it up. His only input to the conversation was a disinterested confirmation that the Bijou were having an Ang Lee double feature on Saturday, Life of Pi followed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

 

“Great thanks” she’d responded stiffly and he’d simply nodded and wrapped his arm around Betty, who’d melted into his side with a smile.

 

Saturday comes around quickly bringing with it a trip into Greendale with Betty for brunch and mani-pedis and the most natural conversation they’ve shared in a while.

 

“I’m so close V, I know I’ll find him soon”

 

“That’s great Betty,” she’d shaken her head in wonder. “I still can’t believe you have a secret brother its incredibly telenovella of you”

 

“And _you_ have a date. Excited?” Betty’s question hadn’t seemed loaded so she’d tried to give her friend the most honest answer she could without revealing how little her heart is in it.

 

“I guess, it’s been so long since I had a first date I can’t remember if they’re actually exciting or just incredibly awkward”

 

Betty had smiled understandingly at that. “Probably a little of both”

 

“Anyway, I have a gorgeous dress,” she’d continued, feeling the need for a little performance to keep Betty’s suspicions at bay. “A midnight blue Valentino with a very modest hemline and an extremely immodest neckline. I think it will have the desired effect”

 

She pulls that dress over matching black lace lingerie later that evening, her hair is already in place and her make up flawless. She doesn’t think she’s being too immodest when she looks in the mirror and decides she looks fabulous.

 

Just as she’s selecting her accessories the intercom buzzes. Ten minutes early she thinks with mild annoyance as she hits the button. “Come on up, I’m almost ready” she says into the machine and doesn’t wait for an answer.  Archie knows the way up, maybe they can all have a drink before they head out.

 

“Don’t go out with him,” she looks up from where she’d been pulling her heels from the closet to see Jughead standing in her apartment doorway with his hair free of his beanie and his eyes trained on the ground.

 

“Jughead, what are you doing here?” She hurriedly tugs him inside and shuts the door. “Are you completely insane they’ll be here any minute”

 

“I don’t care,” he presses closer, eyes finally finding hers. His gaze has the recklessness of a drunk’s and she wonders briefly if he’s been drinking. “Veronica don’t go out with him.”

 

“Jughead, stop it, it’s already arranged I have to go,” there’s no smell of booze on his breath and his blue eyes are bright and clear so she’s hopeful she’ll be able to get him to see sense, and get out before Archie arrives and asks questions. “Why are you even here?”

 

“Don’t,” his voice catches and he swallows down the emotion and shakes his head without releasing her gaze from his. “Don’t do that, you know why,”

 

“Jughead,” her voice is pure warning. _Back off._ She can’t handle this, handle him, right now. She’s far too ready to acquiesce, to tell him of course she won’t. That her loyalties lie right here in the storm clouds of his gaze.

 

“It’s killing me Veronica,” he pleads, melodramatic and perfectly serious.  “The thought of you going out with him. It’s fucking killing me”

 

Her anger flares in response.

 

“Hello hypocrisy,” she snaps bitterly. “I watch you with Betty every day Jughead, every god damn day.”

 

“I know,” he has the decency to look a little shamed. She knows he’s self-aware enough to know he’s being  hypocritical self-absorbed prick right now.

 

She’s not done, perhaps she’s been waiting to throw this bitterness at him for a while. Perhaps her feelings for him are not as unconditional as she tried to tell herself they were. Perhaps she’s as possessive as he is after all. “I have to hear second hand from Kevin what great sex you two are having.”

 

“Vero-”

 

 _No_ she thinks, _shut the fuck up, you don’t get to do this. Not now._

 

“And my going on a double date to a movie is killing you?” the bitterness in her tone is replaced by a seething sarcasm. “Really?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he looks suitably abashed in the face of her bileful attack but being in the wrong doesn’t seem enough to make him let it go. “Please don’t go, I can’t stand the thought of him touching you”

 

“Maybe I want to be touched Jughead,” she tilts her chin in haughty challenge that he do something, anything, about it. “Maybe I need to be”

 

His expression flickers for a second before a wave of resolve hardens his eyes and he surges forward hands going to her waist as he presses her back against the sideboard. He buries his face in the crook of her neck and runs his hands clumsily up her sides to paw her breasts through the satin of her dress.

 

It’s so unlike him, this artless desperate groping, so far from the skilful self-control he’s shown before. He kisses her neck sloppily and even though it’s not the most erotic thing he’s ever done to her she still tips her head to give him access, because its him and she’s missed him so much.

 

“I’ve missed you,” he mumbles as if the thought had leapt directly from her brain to his. “So much. Christ”

 

He lifts her onto the sideboard and pushes up her skirt hands greedy against her skin mouth trailing across her jaw to land roughly on hers. The kiss is a harsh invasion that takes her breath away not because of any clichéd swell of emotion but simply because he’s shoved his tongue so far down her throat that she can barely breathe.

 

It’s not pretty. He grinds against her in a way that’s utterly male; a desperate physical need that turns his deft touch clumsy and his kisses boorish. But despite that it’s uncomfortable and the way his mouth moves to attack her breast is more a maul than a caress she feels sexy, powerful, at having brought him to this. Because this isn’t simply the lust of a man for a woman, this his lust for her, specifically and entirely for her.

 

His hands run roughly over her body, grasping and kneading any softness he can find with prideless desperation while he curses against her skin. Disjointed, senseless words - “ _I can’t”_ and _“I need”_ and _“please”_ that one over and over _“Veronica please please please” –_ each one a trigger in her belly, a painful twinge of proprietary desire. His need belongs to her, she is the cause and the cure, and that makes him, right now at least, only hers.

His hand travels between them to fumble with the buckle of his belt and for just a split second his need for her seems so desperate, so close to insanity, that the thought that he might not stop if she told him to flashes in her mind. She’s rejects the though even before he goes still – with his mouth pressed against her throat and his hand on his own zipper - he’s never played fast and loose with her consent and she knows there’s no scenario in which he ever would.

 

“Veronica, is this, -” he nuzzles against her ear his with a clumsy animal-like affection, his breath hot and damp against her skin. “Please, tell me you want this. Please”

 

“I do,” she presses her hips forward wondering fleetingly where her guilt is. Shouldn’t she be conflicted? At least a little. She’s not. What she wants right now more than she’s wanted anything in a very long time is for her best friend’s boyfriend to screw her, fast and nasty, fully clothed on the sideboard. “Just like this. Don’t hold back”

 

He grunts, a sort of guttural whimper of desire and relief, and frees himself from his jeans. The same hand that guides him towards her clumsily shoving aside her panties. He thrusts inside her, forcing his way past the slight resistance of her body until he’s buried as deep inside her as he’ll go. “Christ,” she gasps relishing the burn of the intrusion. This is how she wants it. She wants to feel the urgency of his need, and the madness she’s created in him, thrumming through his body and into hers. She wants him to fuck her like he doesn’t have a choice. As he grabs roughly at her arse and buries his face in her cleavage she thinks perhaps he doesn’t.

 

She wraps her legs around him as her body catches up, her arousal rising in slick answer to his. “Fuck,” he voices his appreciation for the sudden ease with which he can pump into her. “I’ve missed this, so fucking much”

 

“Me too,” she tugs roughly at his hair bringing his face to her's in invitation of another deep kiss. She pushes back this time her tongue wet and rough against his, making him moan helplessly as he pulls away to suck on the one tit he’s managed to free from her dress. “I missed you too,” she repeats thrusting her chest harder into his mouth and looking down at the shiny mess of inky black hair she’d admired even before she knew how good it felt between her fingers. He’s here. After all these weeks of trying to fight her feelings, all the long aching nights and the tiny dawns of guilty hope, he’s finally inside her again. “Christ, yes, I love you”

 

The both go instantly still at her words and she tries to silence the _shit shit shit_ running a loop in her head as he pulls back and looks into her eyes. These words - this truth she’s barely acknowledge to herself and yet has guided every single act of sacrifice and of selfishness since the day they were discovered - were never supposed to find their way to his ears.

 

His hand, the one that had been roughly groping her breast delicately pushes her hair form her face so that he can look into her eyes.

 

“Say that again,” he demands in a low commanding voice.

 

She swallows down the instinct to try and take it back, it’s out there now and, despite that it may ruin absolutely everything, she’s strangely glad. “I love you”

 

The words seem directly connected to his hips which surge forward in response driving him almost painfully deep inside her. “Again”

 

“I love you,” words that were supposed to be hard but had come easily once before and now tumble out of her like water overflowing a storm drain.

 

“Fuck,” he slams his mouth down on hers and fucks her hard and fast on the sideboard of her mother’s penthouse. It’s only minutes before she feels the familiar build of his orgasm in the way the muscles in his back coil and uncoil, in the quickening of his breath.

 

His mouth leaves hers and comes to her ear as he pounds into her. “Again” he whispers, “please”

 

“I love you”

 

He cums with a helpless groan and her body shudders in response, her orgasm a muted echo of his. His movements slow to long slow thrusts and the tension in his body collapses like dry sand. “Veronica” he murmurs his hands turning tender over her body. “God Veronica”

 

She tangles her fingers in his hair, his gorgeous out of control hair that she’s missed so much, and answers with a hum of satisfaction.

 

He pulls back and flattens her hair against her face with the palm of his hand. “Veronica, I-“

 

The loud buzzing of the intercom interrupts him and she thinks she could cheerfully rip it off the wall right now and throw it at whoever dared press the button marked Lodge. “Ignore it Jug, tell me.” _Please tell me._

 

He swallows and strokes his thumb over the apple of her cheek. “I-“

 

Her hand flies out when the intercom interrupts him again and her fingers slam against the button. “What?!”

 

“Er Hi Veronica?”

 

Their private bubble burst not with a pop but with a sickening splat.  “Oh, hey Andy”

 

She wiggles and Jughead slips out of her and moves only fractionally back, the pained frown and slight shake of his head a silent repetition of his earlier words _don’t go out with him._

“Can you give me a minute?” she says trying not to sound too breathless, too much like she’s just been fucked hard. “I’m having a minor wardrobe malfunction. I’ll be down in ten ok”

 

“Ok, no worries, we’ll just hang in the lobby I guess”

 

“Great”

 

She turns to Jughead. “I have to go”

 

“You don’t,” he insists abandoning buttoning his jeans in favour of taking her face between his hands.  “Please don’t”

 

“If I don’t everyone will want to know why”

 

“So?”

 

“So,” she snaps. “I can’t deal with an interrogation from Betty, not until we have some clue what we do next”

 

He deflates and takes a shuddering breath, the guilt that’s already swarming over her like a million crawling insects clearly catching up with him too. He nods and buckles his belt looking forlorn in a way that makes her want to offer him at least some small comfort. “We’ll figure it out, somehow, but I have to go now,” he shakes his head and doesn’t move back. “And aren’t you supposed to be at Betty’s”

 

His gaze clamps onto hers then, panic rimming his irises in white. “I can’t. Christ V what if she wants to-” the words trail off into a bilious looking swallow.

 

“Well then make and excuse and make it stick ok,” she gives him a stern look. “We are not letting this blow up into a shit storm tonight, I mean it”

 

He nods but doesn’t move. So, she shoves him roughly out of the way and heads to the bathroom to clean herself up. When she emerges he’s sitting on the couch where they’d once made love with his head in his hands. When he looks up his cheeks are wet with tears and she knows it’s really hit him now, the way it hit her moments earlier as she dug in her drawer for a fresh pair of panties, what they’ve done and to whom.

 

She doesn’t go to him, despite the ache in her arms to comfort him, because if she did she’s not certain she could let him go and they cannot be discovered like this. Wouldn’t it be selfish, she thinks, to let their guilt overflow now into messy hurried confessions? Hasn’t Betty had enough of that ugly public drama? No, the only right thing now in this horribly wrong situation is to suck it up get through tonight, regroup, and find a way to make this right without destroying the girl they both love in the process.

 

“Give me ten minutes then leave through the back” she orders brusquely, she can’t afford to be weak now, no matter how much she longs to hold him.  He stands and takes a step towards her with the words his guilt won’t let him say written clearly in his expression.

 

“I won’t let him touch me Jughead,” she relents, softening like ice cream in the heat of his gaze. It’s true, she won’t so much as let him hold her hand, not now. Not with the taste of Jughead’s kisses on her lips and the echo of her own confession in her ears. “I promise”

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The date is, she supposes, quite pleasant. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Andy save for the simple fact of not being Jughead. Honestly, he’s objectively a far superior dating candidate.

 

Where Jughead is sardonic and curmudgeonly, Andy is sweet and positive. Where Jughead judges, Andy, appears at least, to accept. Andy is better looking than Jughead, more athletic and certainly better built. Objectively, and if she were in the mood to objectify, she’d score Andy a solid 8 and Jughead she’d be generous to award a 6.

 

But Andy is not Jughead and when his smile turns flirtatious her blood continues to flow sedately through her veins and her skin remains cool and dry across her palms.

 

She does a near perfect job of shutting out her guilt and going through the motions of her date without letting her mind wander too often to the crime against friendship she committed just hours earlier on the furniture of her mother’s apartment with her dress bunched up around her waist and her legs wrapped possessively around her best friend's boyfriend.

 

The guilt hits her hardest when, in a non-too subtle attempt to leave her and Andy alone, Archie and Susanna insist on being dropped off first and she finds herself outside Betty’s house feeling like eels and a horde of other slithering bottom dwellers have taken up residence in the silt-like sludge of guilt in her belly.

 

When Betty herself comes striding to the car looking visibly agitated she assumes that Jughead must have defied her and already confessed. She braces herself for the righteous anger of her best friend and is met instead with relief.

 

“V, oh thank God, I really need you”

 

“Betty, what’s wrong?”

 

“I,” the blonde glances awkwardly at Andy. “I’m sorry I don’t want to ruin your date but I really need you to go and find Jughead for me. He’s not answering his phone and he needs to be here right now”

 

“B, what happened?”

 

“I found him, I found my brother and it’s-” Betty's eyes shine with unshed tears. “I don’t even know what it means. I just need Jughead”

 

“Of course,” They’ll be honest tomorrow, she reasons. Right now Betty obviously needs support more than she needs the truth. “On it, don’t worry, I’ll get him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did it work? Let me know. Any predictions?


	12. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s Betty,” the fantasy evaporates, burned away by her words and replaced by a familiar rise of bile flavoured guilt in his throat. “She sent me to get you”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, i know it's been a while but this was not that easy to write and real life in the form of a freelance IT project ate all my free time for weeks.
> 
> Anyway i have an offering, i hope it works, let me know what you think.
> 
> Also thank so much for the reviews, i love getting your feedback and er sorry to G.A. Reynolds who suggested a scenario in which Betty's heart doesn't get broken. Er, yeah about that :-S

**Jugheads POV**

 

He turns off his phone after the first two ignored calls from Betty and lies on his father’s bed in the trailer with the lights out determined not to open the door if his girlfriend comes knocking.

 

He’s used to feelings of unworthiness, has lived with them since long before his mother decided to leave him behind. He’s wasn’t enough for her to stay, he wasn’t enough to stop his dad from drinking himself into oblivion, he wasn’t enough to stop Archie ditching him for a summer fling with a teacher. His grades weren’t good enough to stop teachers constantly assuming the worst, he wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to try for a place on any of the teams that might have stopped him being so mercilessly bullied through middle school.

 

He’s not good enough to be an author - he’s been reading back his novel and it is absolute tripe - and he is certainly not good enough, was never good enough, to be Betty Cooper’s boyfriend.

 

Tonight, those feelings of unworthiness hold less self-pity and more self-loathing than ever. He cheated on Betty. He cheated on Betty Cooper with her _best_ friend. He’s the absolute lowest of the fucking low.

 

He wants to tell himself it was a mistake, unplanned and regrettable. But it wasn’t and it isn’t.

 

He jumped aboard the train leading him to this weeks ago when he told Veronica he missed her. He could have disembarked at any number of the stops along the way. After that first late-night text or when she sat beside him in class. He should have leapt off it even as it gathered speed when her hand found his beneath the desk.  He should absolutely not have cut the brakes that day in the blue and gold when he’d admitted to more than just still wanting her.

 

He didn’t. Bottom line: he didn’t want to.

 

She’s just as guilty of riding that train as he is, but it was him who snapped. Who, when faced with the thought of her moving on, tuned out his own hypocrisy and followed the madman’s voice in his head telling him that she was his, _fucking his_ , and no one else should ever touch her.

 

He hasn’t showered or eaten, he’s lain this way in the dark with her smell still on his skin all evening trying to think of a way out of this mess. Betty deserves the truth of course but not the pain that goes with it.  His guilty mind tries to formulate a version of the truth that won’t destroy everything but they’re pretty much all just amount to lies of one kind or another.

 

_Veronica loves him._

He squeezes his eyes shut against the thought. Not now, he tells himself, focus on Betty She’s the victim.

 

_Veronica loves him._

His mind wanders, for the hundredth time that night, away from how to right the wrong they’ve done Betty and back to Veronica

 

_“I love you”_ not once but three times she’d said it. In the throes of passion perhaps but still she’d said it. Repeated it like saying it was a release, her voice ragged and her breath catching.

 

He has no right, no right in the world, to feel anything other than utterly wretched after what he’s done tonight. But when he replays her words he’s - damn him for the piece of shit he is - he’s happy.

 

The knock on the door he’s been dreading comes a little after eleven and he presses his palms against his eyes and resolutely ignores it.

 

“I know you’re in there Jughead open the god damn door right now”

 

“Veronica,” he’s up in a flash and tugging open the door. She looks worried and beautiful in the low light of the trailer park and the last thought he should have is the first one that hits his mind. He wants her. He wants her right now in the trailer where he first told Betty he loved her. He wants to take her to his father’s room and make love to her on the musty bed as if they’re the only two people in the world and they have nothing to be ashamed of.

 

“It’s Betty,” the fantasy evaporates, burned away by her words and replaced by a familiar rise of bile flavoured guilt in his throat. “She sent me to get you”

 

“Why?” he almost chokes on his own words. “Does she know?”

 

“No,” Veronica’s sleek hair sways around her face as she shakes her head. “This is something else, something to do with her brother. Come on we need to go”

 

In the back of the Lodge’s town car on the way to Betty’s he watches Veronica until she snaps at him. “What?”

 

_Do not ask_ , he orders himself a split second before the words break free from his mouth. “Did you mean it?”

 

Veronica gives him a look that’s half reprimand, half plea. “Jughead can we please not do this now?”

 

“Fine,” the word sounds spikey, barbs of self-preservation jutting brier-like from his tone.

 

They fall silent as he fights the itch in his fingers to touch her, the worm in his brain insisting he push her for an answer, and watches the dark window just beyond her profile.

 

Betty comes out when they reach the Coopers’ house and rushes toward them. She pulls up just out of reach and clasps her hands together. “Oh, Jug, I’m so glad you’ve come, I have no idea what to do”

 

“What’s going on Betts?” it’s easier than he would have thought to put aside his guilt and simply offer himself up to her help. Veronica too, is at her side laying a hand on the blondes back.

 

“Tell us B?”

 

“We found Charles, my brother,” she doesn’t look excited, she looks nauseous as she shakes her head and bites her lip. “He’s inside but-”

 

“Betty,” Alice appears at the door looking frayed. “Oh Jughead, you better come in”

 

Charles is sitting in the lounge looking as out of place in the suburban perfection of the Cooper home as he himself does. He’s wearing a wife beater and an uneasy expression. “Maybe I should just go”

 

“No,” Alice rushes forward, a pleading in her voice he’d never have associated with the fire breathing dragon he’s always known her as. “Please don’t Charles, it’s just a little complicated for Betty”

 

Betty looks at the ceiling and scoff bitterly. “You could say that mom”

 

Charles pushes his thick mid-brown hair out of his face and focuses deep chocolate eyes on Jughead, “This him?”

 

Alice doesn’t look away from her son’s face. “Yes, that’s Jughead”

 

“Er,” Jughead gives an awkward half wave. “Hey”

 

“Hey”

 

A ghost of understanding flashes across his mind, scuttling like a creepy kid past a doorway in a horror movie, but when he tries to focus on it it vanishes.

 

“Oh my god” Veronica murmurs off to his left

 

“What?” he looks over to find her watching at him with fathomless concern in her dark eyes.  Her body gives an almost imperceptible twitch as if she’s holding herself back from coming to him.

 

“Jughead, Charles isn’t a full brother to Betty,” Alice draws their attention from where she’s settled herself next to her long-lost son on the couch, her body angled protectively towards the young man as she speaks. “I didn’t want to believe it, and he was so fair when he was born, but Hal isn’t his father”

 

“Right,” clearly there’s something he should be seeing, some connection that remains just out of his grasp. Then Charles exhales in a huff through his mouth and he’s powerfully reminded of his own father does the exact same thing when he’s nervous. “Shit”

 

The smirk that touches Charles’ lips and the wry defeatist humour in his eyes could easily be coming at him from a mirror. “Hello brother”

 

“Christ, fuck”

 

“Jughead!” Alice scolds. “Language”

 

“Sorry Mrs Copper, but fuck!”

 

Betty crosses her arms and lifts both eyebrows in tacit agreement. The room falls into an awkward silence during which Veronica takes just one step closer to his side. She’s not beside him, not by a long way, but the tiny lessening of the distance between them feels like a steadying embrace.

 

Alice stands jerkily as that Cooper sense of social propriety kicks in like a defence mechanism. “I’ll make some tea”

 

“And I should go,” Veronica says awkwardly, her eyes flitting between the three semi-siblings. Betty nods and he has to physically swallow the _please don’t_ pressing at the back of his teeth.

 

“Thanks V,” Betty hugs Veronica and he shares a look with her over the blonde’s shoulder. There’s no communication in it, not really, it’s just a locking of eyes. But it settles the churn of panic in his gut just enough that when she goes he can sit on the vacant couch opposite his brand-new brother and accept a cup from Alice without physically trembling.

 

It’s strange sitting there with this guy who’s just like him but a bit like Betty too. It makes the things he’s done with Betty feel, not wrong exactly, he understands the nature of incest both physical and emotional, but odd. He thinks she feels it too. He senses it in the way she sits a foot away from him on the couch where she usually snuggles into his side.

 

He feels like a complete and utter shit when he looks at this brother of his, who’s lived through the hell of an uncaring foster system, and sees a get out of jail free card. Because if this changes his relationship with Betty, if they’re now siblings by proxy, then maybe he can break the shackles of being her boyfriend without admitting what he did or what he wants.

 

_You prick_ , he thinks, _you cowardly prick._

“Does my dad know?” he asks more to fill the silence than in defence of his father’s paternal rights.

 

“I need to talk to Hal first” Alice answers. “But he will. If you want him to Charles”

 

Charles seems pretty easy going on pretty much everything. He does a lot of shrugging. “Whatever,” he says frequently. Jughead recognises the guarded responses. Don’t show them you care, don’t let anyone see you weak. But if Jughead has walls Charles has battlements. He’s a fortress of unconcern at which Betty and Alice flap as ineffectively as butterflies.

 

Perhaps he will do better, he’s closer to something Charles, or Chic as he corrects them, can recognise. “Smoke?” he offers producing a pack of Marlboro from his breast pocket.

 

Betty gives the packet a disapproving look but says nothing as the two men head out to the back porch.

 

“Nice jacket,” his brother observes knowingly as they spark up.

 

He snorts, “Yeah. Dad’s got one to match, your mom too apparently, back in the day. Although, honestly, I struggle to picture it”

 

Chic nods, he can almost see the young man filing away the information, creating a picture of his new family. “Not Betty though? She’s nice. She’s your girlfriend, right?”

 

He snorts, “That seems suddenly unclear”

 

Chic winces apologetically. “Sorry, dude”

 

Jughead flicks ash from the end of his cigarette and shrugs. “Not in any way your fault”

 

“And the posh chic?”

 

He fights to keep his tone level as he answers despite the pressure in his throat begging him to swallow. “Veronica. Betty’s best friend”

 

“Right,” Chic takes a long contemplative drag on his cigarette. “She never took her eyes off you, bro”

 

He does swallow then, unable to resist the nervous impulse. “It’s complicated”

 

Chic’s smirk is wry and knowing, he imagines the same expression has graced his own features countless times, he never realised how unsettling it can be. “I bet”

 

Fortunately, the older boy lets it go then and they smoke in silence. He never wanted a brother, Archie has always been enough. But he thinks as brothers go Chic might work out ok. He seems to know how to keep a conversation short and that’s a very good start.

 

A little before one Alice manages to persuade Chic to stay in Polly’s room for the night and the two disappear upstairs leaving Betty and Jughead side by side on the couch.

“What are you thinking, Juggie?” Betty asks after a long silence, tucking her legs up underneath her and turning to face him.

 

“Fuck knows Betty,” he lays his head back on the couch and Betty mirrors the action, her green eyes finding his with tired curiosity. “It’s a kinda out of left field”

 

“Yeah”

 

“But I guess, I’m happy,” she looks surprised at the simplicity of his answer so he shrugs and does his best to explain. “Jelly’s been gone a while, and my dad’s- well you know. Kinda feels like I can use all the family I can get”

 

“I get that,” Betty replies, supportive as ever, before adding almost to herself. “He looks so much like you.”

 

She doesn’t need to add the _it’s weird_ he can read in her expression. Weird to have a brother look so much like a lover, he’s fairly sure that if their shared sibling had been a perfect blonde Betty clone he’d have been thinking the exact same thing.

 

“I don’t know what to do” she admits. “I don’t want things to change between us, I don’t want to lose you Jug, but-” she trails off and she looks so pained, so earnest and good an honest that he knows he can’t use Chic as an excuse. He owes her the truth no matter how painful.

 

But, tonight is not the night and shouldn’t Veronica get a say too, or at least a heads up?

 

“There’s actually something else I needed to talk to you about, but it’s late and tonight’s already been,” he pauses, he doesn’t want to scare her when she already has so much on her plate, he just wants to leave some sort of marker in their relationship so that he can honestly say later that he hadn’t lied to her. “A lot”

 

Her eyes are starting to droop with exhaustion so he tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and imprints the memory of her tired tender smile into his memory. “Get some sleep Betts”

 

She nods sadly and leans into his touch. “Ok, I love you Jug”

 

He can’t help the wetness of his eyes when he thinks this is the last time she’ll look at him this way, the last time she’ll say the words it felt like he spent his entire adolescence longing to hear from her. He holds her eyes and tries to convey the truth of his reply, hoping some faint trace of it will stay with her when he destroys everything else. “I love you too Betty, always”

 

He leaves the soft lights of the Cooper house behind and walks through the dark streets in the wrong direction, the only direction his feet will take him, with the poverty of Southside behind him the grandeur of the Pembrooke ahead.

 

 

Veronica wears no make-up, a baggy sleep shirt and sweat pants. She wears them like a shield, or perhaps as a statement, as if she can hide her beauty from him and with it her desire. She holds herself stiffly on the other side of the room and speaks in a voice that sounds oddly studied as if she’s been rehearsing this interaction in her mind since they parted in Betty’s living room.

 

“I have to tell Betty,” his own voice is strange too, an irregular mess of pitch and tone. “I can’t lie to her,” he almost pleading despite that Veronica nods along with him. “It’s Betty”

 

“Of course,” she agrees and just for a second her façade shifts and her eyes tell the story of how much she knows she’ll lose. Because when Betty and Veronica’s friendship rips apart their mutual friends will inevitably side with Betty and Veronica doesn’t have anything in Riverdale that isn’t linked to Betty. Even him, he doesn’t know if Betty will ever forgive him, but he’ll still be her sort of step brother and Archie’s best friend, the two of them will at least remain in one another’s orbits while Veronica will be cast out of the solar system.

 

He steps forward, drawn moth-like to the flame of her suffering and reaches out a shaky hand to touch her face.

 

Her resolve hardens before his eyes and she steps back and moves away from him. “You should go Jughead,” she says in a cold businesslike tone.

 

“Vero-”

 

“I can’t see you anymore. I mean literally, at all. We can’t hang around each other Jughead, it’s not right”

 

He realises then that her sweats aren’t a shield, they’re her sackcloth. She can’t make things right with Betty but perhaps she can atone somehow, to the universe maybe. Maybe if she shuts him out, if she does the right thing now that it’s too late that will count for something.

 

He’s not sure what he’d expected. He’d certainly harboured no fantasies about a happy ending for them but the finality of her tone feels like a punch in his already churning gut. He wants to point out that they’ve already done the worst thing they can do, and didn’t she say she loved him? Doesn't that mean anything?

 

“So that’s it?” he tries not to sound too pathetic, but probably fails, he can feel himself shattering from the centre outwards. “You and me, we’re just done?”

 

“You and me never were Jughead”

 

“Bullshit,” he snaps. “You,” he’s clenches his jaw, he is not going to cry while she stands there watching him break with her dry cold eyes. “You said you loved me”

 

She ignores that, whether in acknowledgement or denial he can’t tell, and returns to the carefully choreographed steps of her penitence.

 

“All that matters is doing right by Betty, which means I quit the Vixens, I find a new friendship group and I definitely stay away from you,” she stands stock still. She doesn’t finger her pearls or shake her head. Her eyes don’t find the middle distance with that swirl of dark emotion he’s seen before. She’s a statue of herself, perfect, feelingless, cold. “Don’t make this harder Jughead”

 

“Harder, that what Veronica,” he hasn’t a shred of her control, he feels like she’s splintered him into a dozen version of himself. His heartbreak, like light hitting a prism, separating out into all its distinct parts, sadness, hopelessness, understanding, and anger. “Harder than telling Betty the two of people she loves and trusts most in the world betrayed her? Harder than finding a way to be a brother to her brother and a best friend to her best friend while she hates me?”

 

Veronica tilts her chin, expression unchanging despite the bleak reality of her words. “Harder than losing everybody and everything”

 

“You don’t have to, not me at least,” now or never he thinks. Tell her now and there’s a chance, slim though it may be, that she’ll change her mind. That her dogged commitment to atonement will break and they’ll be talking about how to find a way, _any way_ , to be together. “I l-“

 

“Stop,” a flicker of emotion; cracks across the marble of her face. “Don’t say it”

 

“You wanted to hear it earlier,” he steps forward again and she stiffens visibly. “I know you did”

 

“That was then,” She moves past him and goes to the door. She holds it open and looks at the opposite wall and not at his face. “It’s different now. Leave Jughead, before I call Andre to make you leave”

 

It’s not the threat that makes him go, Andre’s a hard bastard sure but he doesn’t scare that easily, it’s the flint in her eyes, the coldness that is all her father and makes her feel like a stranger to him. He doesn’t think he can bear to look at those eyes a moment longer. “Fine”

 

He trains his gaze on the ground and brushes past her. On the threshold he’s stopped by a warm damp hand on his wrist. She doesn’t close the few inches of distance between their bodies, nor does she lift her stubborn gaze to his face she just holds his wrist in silence until he twists it in his grip so he can take her hand, then she lays her forehead stiffly on his shoulder and the words “I’m sorry,” bleed into his t-shirt along with a wetness that makes him think of those miraculous weeping statues in Catholic churches in Mexico.

 

He lays his cheek on the crown on her head and lets his own tears run unchecked and unashamedly down his cheeks, hoping she’ll feel the answering wetness and in that she’ll hear the words she hasn’t let him say.

 

They stand there long enough for his neck to stiffen up a little then she steps away, turning her back on him. “Goodbye Jughead”

 

“Goodbye,” he hesitates, _my love_ he wants to say, defy her and make her hear his confession. But he doesn’t, she needs her penance and who is he to try and derail it? He may be a snake but he’s no interest in playing the viper tonight. “Veronica.”

 

The next day with his face still stinging from the force with which Betty’s palm had landed he texts her because he has no idea what the furious violent eyed version of Betty who just left him standing outside Pop’s will do next. _“It’s done”_

 

_“How was it?”_ She fires back immediately

_“Awful”,_ he replies and hopes the _how the fuck do you think?_ Will be implied

_“Shit, thank you for letting me know”_

 

_“Of course. Are you ok?”_

By the time he gets back to the trailer he’s given up hope of getting a reply, he lies on the couch and visualises Betty’s heartbroken face.

 

“Why Jug?” how her eyes had been so beautiful when they were full of tears, so big and green and sparkling. “Is it Chic?”

 

“No Betty, I” he’d actually tasted puke in his mouth at that point. “There was, yesterday, there was someone else, I had sex with someone else. I’m sorry”

 

Betty’s expression had changed instantly from confused and wounded to something steel edged, bladelike, a chilling darkness lapping at her eyes. “Veronica”

 

It’s hadn’t been a question but he’d nodded anyway. “It wasn’t her fault. It was me, Betty, I went there. Veroni-“

 

The surprising force with which her hand had met his cheek had been enough to turn his face away, when he’d summoned the courage to look back up her face had been alarmingly close to his. “Stay away from me Jughead, forever”

 

He cries, he doesn’t care if boys aren’t supposed to, he’s been bottling shit up for years, but this, this he can’t. He’s not physically big enough to hold Betty’s pain and his own. His losses, all his own damn fault, overwhelm him and he cries and longs, despite himself he longs with a dizzying intensity, for the lost comfort of Veronica’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So again sorry for the delay. I also have an almost there chapter of Things unrequited i'll get up soon and I'll try and improve turnaround now my project is wrapped up
> 
> Thanks guys  
> x


	13. Recriminations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She forces herself to look away, because this is her penance, her ultimate act of contrition. To stay away from Jughead Jones even is it makes her feel as if everything inside her is bleeding, like she needs to check it isn’t oozing crimson through her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while. i'm sorry real life is a bit of a time sink. 
> 
> Thanks so much of the comments on the last chapter, i hope i haven't lost you all with my long gaps between chapters

**Veronica’s POV**

 

Veronica barely sleeps that weekend, waiting as she is on high alert for Betty to bring her righteous anger to down on her. Her stomach churns so violently, so constantly, that not only is eating impossible but she’s also denied the numbing comfort of a large glass of something extremely alcoholic.

 

On Monday morning she dresses with deliberate modesty in a knee length pencil skirt and long-sleeved blouse, tucks her neatly folded Vixen’s uniform in her bag, and heads to school with the feeling of wading through a sticky mire for dread.

 

She leaves her uniform with Ginger along with a message for Cheryl that she quits and heads to class without having to face anyone.

 

In third period French Kevin hovers awkwardly at the door, glancing between his usual seat at her side and a free desk on the other side of the room. He chooses the free seat and she’s both saddened and satisfied. This is after all what she deserves.

 

It takes her most of the morning for Veronica to summon the courage to step up behind Betty and lightly tap her shoulder. “Betty?”

 

The blonde turns to her and she’s shocked at just how bad Betty looks. She’s pale and her eyes and nose are tinged with red. The realisation that her friend has cried so long and hard this weekend that the evidence of it still colours her skin feels like being punched squarely in the gut.

 

“I wanted you to know,” she begins and stops, correcting herself. This isn’t about her wants after all. “You should know that I’m sorry Betty. I never meant for you to get hurt and I’m so, so, sorry that you did”

 

Betty’s expression doesn’t change but her eyes darken with anger, or even worse, is it hatred? “Get away from me Veronica”

 

“Betty please,” she hadn’t meant to plead, she’s done her friend enough harm without trying to force an apology on her. She’d intended to say sorry and let Betty do with that as she will. But she can’t help it, a huge part of her wants to fall to her knees and beg Betty to forgive her. “Please let me-”

 

“Explain?” Betty mouth, normally so soft and pink and sweet, curls into an ugly snarl. “No let me _explain._ You fucked my boyfriend Veronica. You fucked the man you knew I loved just because you could.”

 

“No, it wasn’t-”

 

“Because that’s what you do isn’t it? You play games with people. You enjoy their misery because it makes you feel better about the truth. That there is nothing inside of you.” Betty shakes her head and her green eyes are harder than the emeralds they resemble, glinting with malice. “You’re completely hollow, like your mother, like your father. You don’t want anyone else to have love because you’re not capable of it and you know it”

 

She barely realises she’s crying until she feels wetness all the way down near the corner of her mouth. She palms away the tears and shakes her head. “That’s not true”

 

Archie appears and gives her hard look as he takes Betty under his arm and leads her away.

 

Veronica watches them go and wishes Betty were right, that she were truly hollow inside. She’s not. She’s full. Full of guilt, full of pain, full to the fucking brim with a miserable longing. If he were here, if Jughead walked down the hall right now, she thinks she’d probably run into his arms and bury her face in his neck just so she could smell the dime store shower gel on his skin.

 

Thankfully he doesn’t and she manages to beat the impulse back long before she sees him sitting in the farthest corner of the cafeteria sporting a black eye that explains the scraped knuckles she’d noticed earlier on Archie’s hand as he’d laid it on Betty’s shoulder.

 

Veronica spots two girls from the Vixens, Emily and Ruth, who’ve always seemed nice enough and asks if she can join them. In the social hierarchy of the school they sit somewhere near the middle and they’re more than happy to welcome the increasingly infamous Veronica Lodge.

 

Her position opposite the two girls gives her good view of Jughead’s profile as he pushes aside the remains of his lunch and drops his head into his hands. She tries to talk to the girls but she can’t drag her attention away from him. He’s all she can see, all she can feel inside and outside herself. What had she once told Betty? _There’s no off switch for this._ She hadn’t known then how true that is.

 

She forces herself to look away, because this is her penance, her ultimate act of contrition. To stay away from Jughead Jones even is it makes her feel as if everything inside her is bleeding, like she needs to check it isn’t oozing crimson through her skin.

 

Catholic girls and their guilt. How cliché.

 

But that’s disingenuous too, because yes, she is a catholic girl and the comfort of the confessional calls to her and yet she hasn’t been to church. It’s not simply because she doesn’t really think she deserves forgiveness, although she’s certain she does not, but because absolution is only for the truly contrite. And she can’t, she tries but she can’t, make herself truly sorry.

 

There is a hard, stubborn, part of her, like one up-popped kernel of corn that simply refuses to regret being with him. That despite the pain she’s caused herself and him and poor blameless Betty, she would not take back the moments they’ve shared. She does not wish she never kissed him, she does not wish she never felt him inside her, and for all that her heart beats a bloodied agonising rhythm in her chest, she does not wish she didn’t love him.

 

Maybe Betty was right once. Maybe when Archie declared himself and she couldn’t reply, maybe she hadn’t been capable of love then. She’s capable of it now, brutally, gloriously, heart-breakingly capable.

 

“Well, well, well, isn’t this a fascinating development”

 

Her shoulders stiffen at the unwelcome intrusion and her own voice sounds irritated and tired. “No Cheryl, it’s not. It’s really not”

 

Undeterred the redhead perches on the edge of the table, her long shapely legs crossed elegantly. “Veronica Lodge, quits my squad and takes to sitting with the lower order,” she glances over her shoulder at the girls. “No offence”

 

“None taken,” Emily mutters awkwardly.

 

“Meanwhile Betty has Archie and Kevin on constant guard duty and Jughead Jones is cast out like the pariah he is,” Cheryl makes a show of pondering her own words. “What can have happened?”

 

Veronica gives Cheryl a unimpressed look. “How about you mind your own business Cheryl?”

 

“Losing one of my best fliers is my business,” Cheryl says testily before her tone settles back into curiosity. “I assume this grand break up is due to you taking Betty’s boyfriend, former-boyfriend I suppose, for another canter round the paddock.”

 

“You obviously know what happened Cheryl,” Veronica retorts, she has precisely no patience for Cheryl’s games right now. “So what do you want?”

 

“Just confirming my suspicions. That hobo must be quite the Casanova between the sheets.” She turns to look at Jughead with feigned sympathy. “Look, he’s so vulnerable and alone, perhaps I should go and offer him some comfort.”

 

It’s just Cheryl being Cheryl and she knows better than to rise to the redhead’s goading but she can’t stop herself from snapping. “Stay away from him Cheryl”

 

“Possessive much?” Cheryl laughs enjoying this far more than anyone with a shred of decency should. “Don’t worry Veronica, unlike you I have standards. Ciao”

 

Cheryl gives a little wave and leaves, obviously pleased with spreading a little Blossom poison, and Veronica turns to look past an uneasy Ruth just in time to catch Jughead’s eye as he stands. He takes a step forward and her body gives an answering twitch.

 

There’s that noise again in her head, that demand to run to him. She sees no further than that burst of movement. There’s no plan for what she’d say or do once she collides with him. Nothing beyond the command shouted in her mind to go to him.

 

By sheer force of will she bridles her muscles and stays in her seat, watching him struggle to exert the same control. He stands with his eyes on hers for a long moment before taking one jerky step towards her. Her own limbs rail against her will and she almost, not quite, stands. Then he runs a hand through his hair and finally breaks eyes contact and stalks off in the other direction.

 

The air goes out of her in a shaky sigh and she pulls herself together and turns to Emily and Ruth who are watching her with fascinated expressions. “Sorry for bringing the Cheryl monster down on your lunchtime”

 

The two girls exchange a glance then Ruth smiles. “No worries. You wanna hang later? We were gonna catch a movie”

 

Just like that she has a new friendship group. “Sure, I’ll catch you later”

 

 

It’s inevitable that she’ll eventually run into Archie alone and when she does it’s exactly as awkward as she’d imagined it would be.

 

He looks at her with those soft brown eyes, a deep frown carved between his eye brows. “Ronnie,” his voice is strained and she can almost feel the conflict in him.

 

“Hello Archie,” she gives him a sad smile she knows won’t reach her eyes. “How are you?”

 

“I’m sorry Ronnie, I can’t,” he looks about as if he’s nervous Betty will see him talking to her. “You know Betty is-”

 

“Of course,” she cuts him off. “Betty is your best friend and I’m the one who screwed up. I get it Archie, believe me I do”

 

He looks relieved and sad, sad like a goodbye, and she wants to cry at the losing him again just when she’d got him back after the first time her inability to resist fucking his best friend had driven a wedge between them. “Bye Ronnnie”

 

“Goodbye Archiekins”

 

He presses his lips together at the nickname and nods and she’s struck again by how far the ripples of hurt she’s caused will travel. When he turns to leave she stops him with a hand on his arm.

 

“Will you do one thing for me Archie? Please.”

 

He frowns even harder and narrows his eyes in suspicion.

 

“Don’t shut Jughead out, ok. I’m the villain here. I hate that everyone is torn apart because of me. Jughead needs you”

 

He shakes his head and anger simmers darkly in his eyes, turning them a deep mahogany. “That’s what Betty said the first time. But he doesn’t get another pass Veronica, not after doing that to Betty.”

 

“It wasn’t his fault Archie. It was me, I did this”

 

“It takes two,” he sighs looking tired, worn down by the emotional upheaval she’s wrought. “Jug’s been my best friend since kindergarten and I would have sworn on my life he’d never do something like this, least of all to Betty. But he did and I don’t know if I can forgive him. Hell, Ronnie, I don’t know if I even know him anymore. So, no. I’m sorry, I can’t do that for you, because I really don’t know if I know you either.”

 

She thinks about those words later. She knows what he meant. That he thought she was good, despite how often she told them she was a bad seed, and now he sees her as a traitorous Jezebel. She wonders if there are other ways she’s a stranger to him now. Ways that only Jughead knows her. As a wanton foolish girl who’d imagined she could love unconditionally and could not.

 

There’s nothing to do except accept her new situation. The reality in which Betty hates her, Archie has turned away from her and Kevin is pretending she doesn’t exist. So, she simply withdraws into herself. Makes small talk with Emily and Ruth just so that she doesn’t have to be obviously alone and tries to make it through each day.

 

She tries not to watch Jughead. Tells herself she doesn’t linger at her locker longer than necessary each morning in the hope of catching a glimpse of him at his. But it’s a lie, her eyes search for him in every crowded hallway, on the street, in the window of Pops as she drives by.

 

Their one shared class, Chemistry, comes around sooner than she’s prepared for, although it would be a lie to say she hasn’t been anticipating it with a mixture of dread and excitement. They’re paired together and she has no choice but take her place at his side even with Kevin’s eyes watching them accusingly.

 

They sit as far apart as the bench will allow and avoid anything more than furtive glances at each other as Mr Whitley wanders the class collecting the homework that neither of them have done.

 

“Disappointing from both of you” the teacher says when neither can supply more than a shrug of explanation. “Stay behind after class. You two are in detention”

 

They complete the lesson in silence, the contrast between this dreadful distant nearness and the days when they’d leaned in together to study the experiments, his leg pressed against hers and his voice teasing in her ear, is so stark she wants to cry.

 

As the rest of the class file out Mr Whitely settles in his desk and she and Jughead sit side by side in oppressive silence until the teacher’s phone beeps and he stands. “You know the rules. No talking while I’m gone.”

 

They nod but as soon as he’s goes Jughead turns to her. “Veronica, are you ok?”

 

His concern, so genuine in his voice and eyes, makes her body physically itch with the desire to touch him. “Are you?” she responds, finger rising to not quite brush against his bruised eye. “I take it this was Archie”

 

He sighs and leans back in his chair. “Not like I didn’t deserve it, right?”

 

“Yeah”

 

“So-”, “V-”

 

She remembers the last time they spoken over each other this way, back in pops when she’d been so sure that she could stay away from him. That if he were happy she could be happy without him. But in the end he wasn’t, not with Betty.

 

It had been that realisation that had been her undoing. That day in the Blue and Gold when their bodies had vibrated like matched harmonics amplified in each other’s presence. When he’d still believed he wouldn’t, couldn’t, cheat on Betty. That same day he’d told her he was miserable and the last shred of her resolve had crumbled to nothing.

 

His phone vibrates in his bag, the humming loud in the silence between them and he fishes it out and checks his messages.

 

“Chic,” he says by way of the explanation she hadn’t ask for. “We’re gonna hang out later”

 

“Right,” she drums her fingers on the desk for a few moments before curiosity gets the better of her. “How are things with him?”

 

“Good, you know, better than I expected. He’s cool and we understand each other,” he nods introspectively. “Mrs Cooper’s going to tell Hal soon, then he’ll meet my dad”

 

“Right, that’s good I guess”

 

“Yeah I guess”

 

She wants to ask if he’s talked to Betty again, if she hates him as much as she obviously hates her or if history and familial ties will buy him a modicum of forgiveness. But it’s not what she wants to ask the most.

 

She wants to tell him that Archie is still furious with him and he needs to give his old friend more time before trying to build bridges. But it’s not what she wants to tell him the most.

 

They fall into a silence that’s as heavy as it is awkward as the weight of all the things she really wants to say to him, the things she really wants to hear from him, presses down suffocatingly, choking out any words that aren’t those exact three.

 

 

They go back to staring straight ahead and when the teacher returns he nods approvingly, mistaking their silence for obedience and dismisses them early.

 

At the door he turns to her and his eyes search hers with such intensity that for a moment she’s sure he’ll throw caution and contrition to the wind and tell her he needs her. He doesn’t. He bites his lip, shutters his eyes, and gives a brief stiff nod.

 

She nods back and tells herself she’s glad he didn’t. She’s already told him they need to stay away from each other and she should be, she is, grateful that he’s respecting that.

 

The thick jacket on his back and the shirt tied around his waist, hide the shape of him as she watches him walk away and she wishes her mind’s eye couldn’t so perfectly picture the sinuey push and pull of his muscles as he walks or pale scar at the base of his spine that she’d never asked him about.

 

She’ll never know its origins now. What a small, strange, thing to feel so very sad about.


	14. The oil slick tide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It was love?" Betty scoffs. "Of course. And why are you here Veronica? Because you love me too?”
> 
>  
> 
> “I do,” Veronica keeps the car straight this time as she looks over. “I know it doesn’t seem like it after what I did, but I’m here because I do love you. Because I might be the worst friend you ever had Betty, but that doesn't mean you’re not still the best one I’ve ever had.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this took a while. Partly because it was hard to write, partly because life is busy and not at all because i've started a new Jeronica fic. I mean what kind of person would do that when they have two almost complete fics still waiting of the final few chapters. I mean that would be irresponsible fanfic-ing wouldn't it?
> 
> :-s

Betty’s POV

 

“I can walk to practice on my own Arch,” she tries to manufacture an exasperated tone, but she finds these days that her voice never sounds the way it should. There’s an undercurrent of something strained and false that even dear oblivious Archie doesn’t miss.

 

“Betty-”

 

“I’m fine Arch, I promise. I don’t need a body guard,” she holds his gaze until he nods and tells her he’ll find her when she’s done cheering so they can walk home together. He’s a better person than she is, she knows that. Wasn’t she unfaithful to him after all? Sure she hadn’t touched Jughead back when she was with Archie, but she’d wanted to, she’d longed to with every fibre of her being.

 

Was it so different to want something and to act on it? Probably not. Still Archie is full of love and forgiveness and she’s filled up with black tar, a bubbling and slurping pit of churning rage.

 

Turning the corner, she sees Jughead and Veronica exiting the Chemistry lab. They turn briefly to one another and she can see Jughead’s face clearly over Veronica’s shoulder. He looks at her former friend with a searching pained look but whatever he’s looking for in that dark velveteen gaze he clearly doesn’t find. His expression closes and he turns and walks away.

 

 _Are you surprised Jughead?_ She thinks bitterly. _Are you shocked that now she’s played her game she’s casting you aside?_

It’s both anti-feminist and misandristic the way she’s been thinking, the way she casts them. Wicked Veronica, temptress, villain, succubus. Idiot Jughead, weak, foolish, male. She doesn’t care, fuck equality, fuck the sisterhood, fuck the fucking lot of them.

 

It’s easier to cast them that way of course. Her love for that grumpy underfed boy, who was the only kid in first grade who loved books as much as she did, is almost as old as she is. It grew in sync with her bones, writing itself deep in to her marrow. Like her love for Archie, for Polly, even her troubled love for her mother. Jughead is, now perhaps more than ever, family, and she knows better than anyone how no flaw, no transgression, can truly beat down those loves you can’t remember living without.

 

Veronica is new. She fell fast for Veronica, for her friendship and her fire. Veronica dived deep into her veins and ran hot and dazzling in her blood. But blood, can spill, it can pour out and be replaced. It’s not immutable, not like her bones. Veronica can be expunged in a way Jughead cannot.

 

Practice without Veronica feels robotic, a joyless loop of rhythm and sweat. Cheryl gives her a spiteful look and opens her sticky bile-filled mouth to taunt her. “Betty-”

 

She steps forward and lets the darkness that has become her shield show itself behind her eyes. “Try it Cheryl. Go on, say something clever, I fucking dare you”

 

The redhead’s retreat barely feels like a victory. “Dear cousin, I was just going to say how glad I am you’re still with us”

 

At home her family teeters, poised to fall apart while her mother works up the courage to tell her father about Chic. The state of limbo suits her well enough. She knows that once the truth is out Chic will become a fixture in their lives, and with him Jughead.

 

One night when she and her mother had driven to Centerville to visit Chic they’d found him sitting outside his building with Jughead beside him on the concrete step, cigarettes between their fingers and matching expressions on their faces.

 

She’d known looking at them, at how similar they were, that her relationship with Jughead would have been doomed anyway. Because despite sharing not a single scrap of DNA with Jughead she’s fairly certain she would not have been able to fuck a man whose mouth curved in exactly the same way as her brother’s without it feeling incestuous.

 

Jughead made those considerations pretty much moot though when he stumbled blindly into Veronica’s trap. She’d managed to hold his heavy gaze for a moment but hadn’t been able to bring herself to nod her head in acknowledgement, not with all the _whys_ and the _how could yous_ circling in her mind.

 

She’d cried almost solidly the weekend that Jughead had told her that he’d screwed Veronica. Every time the tears had begun to dry her masochistic mind would find some other detail of their betrayal to focus on, and she’d be crying again, into her bedsheets, into Archie’s broad chest or Kevin’s soft sweater.

 

Wasting gallons of herself on the same pointless questions. How could she have been such a fool? how could she not have seen it? How could those two, who were supposed to love her, do that thing to her?

 

Other questions, with answers that would resolve nothing, worm their insidious way into her mind. Where did they do it? Was it good? How beautiful, because there’s no denying they’d have been beautiful, did they look together?

 

She feels like there’s something sucking in her chest, trying to fill the void where her love filled heart used to be with the broken fragments of her caving ribcage. And always there’s the darkness, the one her love, of him and of her, had beaten back, rising like an oil slicked tide.

 

Her father finds her crying one night and perches on her bed while she tells him the barest details. “I’m just so angry dad,” she admits in a whisper. “I feel like I’ll never stop being angry”

 

“They betrayed you Betty, you have every right to be angry”

 

She’d thought of her mother and her secret brother and felt a kinship with her father she couldn’t yet vocalised. _You were betrayed too_.

 

It’s only another few days before the thought of any such kinship is an anxiety inducing mess of nausea, fear and self-doubt.

 

She’s just back from a run that she’d hoped would channel some of her anger into movement but had simply give her too much time to think, to hear his words over and over in time with her footfall, _I slept with someone else._  

 

Her phone rings and a horribly familiar modulated voice speaks. “Hello Betty”

 

Nearly an hour later Veronica finds her dissolving into panic on the side-walk a few hundred meters form the Sheriff’s station. She doesn’t even see her former friend approaching, she’s too tangled up in fear and frustration and the ever-rising darkness which has transformed within her, in the space of an hour, from an ominous distant thunder-head into a raging storm.

 

“Betty,” Veronica’s voice comes out of the blackness, faint and distorted. “Oh my god, Betty, are you ok?”

 

Veronica might be at the very top of her shit list right now but she’s so scared and lost and no one in the station believed her, so she speaks without caring who hears her, in the hope that someone, anyone, will help her.

 

“My dad’s the black hood,” she says feeling detached from her own voice, from that horrible truth, and from Veronica’s gasped “What?”

 

“He has my Mom,” finally her eyes find their focus and her vision is full of Veronica’s worried face. “He’s going to kill her. Archie is away with Susanna and, Sheriff Minetta is a dick and, no one, no one believes me.”

 

“I do,” Veronica responds emphatically. “What do we do?”

 

The part of her that wants to refuse Veronica’s help and turn away with a snarled, “we’re not friends” grumbles in defeat as the scared sixteen year old girl she is clings to anyone who’ll save her from facing this alone.

 

So they steal her mother’s car, Veronica grinding the gears and cursing manual transmission as they drive cautiously out of town.

 

“Call Jughead,” Veronica orders. “Get him to meet us by that abandoned gas station on the edge of town.”

 

He doesn’t question her instructions, he takes her, as he always did, at her word with a brisk. “I’m on my way,” and a softer, firmer, “do not go there without me”

 

Veronica misses her gear change and the gear box protest with a loud crunch that makes them both flinch violently. She can feel adrenaline pulsing through her body making her jumpy and trembly with fear. Veronica’s grip on the steering wheel is white knuckle tight and her breath is coming in shallow audible pants.

 

Why is Veronica here? She wonders. Veronica pushed her and Jughead back together just for the thrill of tearing them apart. A wicked game played simply to exert power over them both. Hardly the actions of someone who cares for her. Yet she’s here now, driving towards a serial killer to rescue a woman who’s never been anything but unpleasant to her, just because Betty needs her.

 

It shouldn’t matter, what Veronica did with Jughead. In the context of her father being the actual black hood, a little teenage infidelity is hardly of consequence. Still one or both of them might not come back from this lunatic mission and she finds herself, for the first time, wanting to hear her former friend’s side.

 

“Why did you do it V?” she asks. “Jughead,” she clarifies as if there could be any doubt about what she means.

 

Veronica glances at her and the car swerves slightly making the raven-haired girl snap her eyes back to the road. There’s a heavy beat then Veronica sighs and speaks softly. “Because I’m a terrible person,” she says sounding resigned, as if she has no control over the worst of herself and she’s only just accepting that. “Because this thing that wasn’t supposed to mean anything suddenly meant everything and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stop wanting him.”

 

There’s a pause, perhaps Veronica wants a response, she doesn’t have one to offer so she keeps silent and waits for more.

 

“I’ve never been in love before, not really, and it was so strong, so fundamental, I thought it would make me better, selfless you know?” Veronica pauses and her brow furrows as if with the effort of articulating this. “That so long as he was happy I’d be able to keep it all inside and just-” she trails off with a shrug and a baleful sigh that is almost plausible.

 

Veronica sounds, sad and vulnerable and so full of regret that for a moment Betty could almost imagine that she’d been caught in the storm instead of creating it. More weak than wicked. “Oh right,” she lets sarcasm drip from her tone as she draws her anger around her heart, shielding it from softening. “It was love?" She scoffs. "Of course. And why are you here Veronica? Because you love me too?”

 

“I do,” Veronica keeps the car straight this time as she looks over. “I know it doesn’t seem like it after what I did, but I’m here because I do love you. Because I might be the worst friend you ever had Betty, but that doesn't mean you’re not still the best one I’ve ever had.”

 

The darkness seethes at Veronica’s words. Pretty lies, spun by a manipulative bitch. And yet she is here and so’s Jughead, waiting by his bike, his body rigid with fear as he climbs into the back. Jughead never did share Archie’s brand of fearless, she thinks, all testosterone and screwed up teenage risk perception. He’s wide eyes and shaking hands afraid and yet he’s here, like Veronica is here with sweat beading on her forehead and a death grip on the steering wheel.

 

Two terrified teenagers unquestioningly facing a serial killer for her. Her betrayers, her lost loves, her private army.

 

They barely have a plan, split up and each try to silently infiltrate the house from a different direction. Snatch her mom and get out of there as fast as possible. She grasping a tyre iron from her mom’s trunk, Jughead has his flick knife and Veronica holds a short length of heavy pipe they found near the gate. Hardly an arsenal to take down a psychopath with a gun, but it’s all they have so they hold them tightly as they huddle out of sight of the house.

 

“Be careful” Jughead orders and she nods, letting the darkness fill her up, squeezing out the fear and making her calm. Jughead’s eyes move away from hers to meet Veronica’s and he hesitates for a moment before he steps decisively forward and presses his forehead to hers. “Be safe” he orders gruffly and she clings to his forearms and nods against him.

 

She can almost believe it in that moment, that it’s love between them. That there’s love in the way Veronica’s hands slide reluctantly from his arms, lingering in the air after he tears himself away, and in her eyes as they watch him disappear around the back of the house, crouched low in the scrubby foliage of what was once a garden.

 

Veronica gives her a brief frightened look before she too vanishes, her steps fast and light despite her high heels.

 

She takes the front door, having argued that she’s the one her father is least likely to actually shoot, and steps as quietly a possible inside.

 

The house appears at first to be silent, but straining her ears she can hear a faint scuffling to her right. She follows the sound, her back pressed to the wall, creapping so slowly her muscles ache with the effort as she tests each floorboard before transferring her weight onto it. At last she reaches the doorway and carefully peeps into what must have once been a living room.

 

Against the left-hand wall she sees not just her mother but her brother as well sitting on the floor with their ankles bound and their hands tied behind their backs, where Jughead is crouched, working to cut the thick ropes with his knife.

 

She’s about to go to him when her father enters the room from the far side and she jerks back out of sight with her heart thundering to watch through a tiny crack in the doorframe.

 

“I don’t think so Mr Jones. Step away now.”

 

Her mother’s voice comes next, the same tone she always used with her husband, irritated and condescending, as if weren’t levelling a gun on her and her son. “For Christ’s sake Hal, I’m the one who stepped out on you. Be a man about it and deal with me, let the kids go”

 

“Kids,” her father sneers, “FP’s children. Lowlifes and philanderers just like their father. Do you know what he did to our Betty?” her father waves the gun at Jughead and she sees him tense visibly.  “Screwing around behind her back”

 

“Seriously Hal?” Alice rolls her eyes, her customary antipathy towards her husband unchecked, it seems, by him turning out to be a serial killer. “They’re just kids, they make mistakes, it’s not a shooting offence”

 

Hal levels the gun on Jughead, malice in his eyes and in his voice. “I disagree.”

 

“Don’t you sweetheart?”  her father’s tone morphs into that cheerful all-American dad voice that echoes across suburbs the country over. Indulgent and conversational in a way that makes Betty’s skin crawl. “Why don’t you come on in here Betty dear? You too Miss Lodge”

 

She goes in keeping the tyre iron tucked against her thigh in the hope he won’t notice it and sees Veronica scurry to Jughead’s side.

 

“You did well to bring them here Betty. We’ve got so much work to do in this town, this sinful town,” he nods looking pleased and resolved, sickeningly proud. “You’re right, we should start with them, put our own house in order and all”

 

The stomach lurches. What the hell does her father think she is? His good right hand in some town wide cleansing? His mini-me fucking psycho killer, out for revenge on her best friend and her ex?

 

He thinks they’re the same, she realises with a drowning sense of dread, and the blackness that lives in her feels like it’s eddying around her, pulling her under, submerging her, making her like him.

 

“Dad,” she starts but the name sticks somewhere in her back of her throat, choking her with the implicit kinship it holds.

 

“We’ll start with him shall we Betty? The cheater”

 

Her father glances at her as he turns the gun on Jughead and she can see her darkness reflected in his eyes. They are kin, and yet they are not, as she’d feared, kindred, because she has something in her even now to beat that blackness back, a spark of light, a flickering candle of love that no betrayal could extinguish. Jughead burns inside her still and she would do anything in this moment to keep him alive.

 

Veronica it seems would do the same, as Hal cooper looks down the barrel of the gun Veronica steps forward, placing herself between Jughead and his would be murderer, her eyes squeezed shut, fist clenched at her sides, body braced for the oncoming bullet. Her father pulls the trigger and at the same instant Betty brings the tyre iron down hard on his wrist.

 

There’s a deafening crack, a noise too big for the small room, and dust billows upwards as the bullet ricochets off the floor and  finds Veronica’s shoulder spinning her round and knocking her to the ground.

 

“Veronica,” Jughead’s on his knees at her side babbling barely intelligible nonsense as her pale blouse saturates with red. “Oh, God, V, shit, shit, please, oh God”

 

Her father reaches down to reclaim the gun and she brings the pipe down again, with all her strength, on the back of his skull knocking him down but no out. The gun feels warm with her father’s sweat and heavy with his guilt as she reaches for it and levels it on him.

 

“I’m ok Jughead,” Veronica sits up clutching the wound. “Get Chic and Alice”

 

Jughead hesitates, hands reaching for Veronica. “Quickly,” Veronica snaps and he moves away to free her mother and their brother.

 

She doesn’t take her eyes of her father as he rolls onto her back and looks up at her, with a disappointed shake of his head. “Betty,” he admonishes her like she’s a child. “That was weak, they should pay for hurting you”

 

“No,” she feels the darkness ebbing away, and in its wake, a warm rush of realisation that she is not a monster, that never for a single second since she found out about their betrayal has her anger ever made her wish them harm. “They shouldn’t. Not like this”

 

Chic comes to her side as soon as Jughead frees him and starts transferring the ropes that had held him to her father. “Ok sis?” he asks under her breath and she nods but doesn't get a chance to speak before her mother barrels into her, pulling her in close and reaching for Chic too so that the three of them a locked in a tight three-way hug. She glances up to see Jughead cradling Veronica and makes a small waving gesture with her free hand, beckoning them to her.

 

They shuffle over in the dust and Jughead pulls his brother in under his arm while she carefully envelopes her injured friend in the huddle. “You really love him?” she whispers and feels Veronica nod against her arm with a mumbled apology. “Ok V,” she says without any real idea what she means by it. “Ok”

 

In the hospital later, with the red lights still flashing on her retina and the phantom sound of sirens in her ears, she wanders the corridors searching for Veronica’s room. From the doorway she hears Jughead’s voice. “I don’t want to hurt her either Veronica, but Christ you could have died today, and I’m sorry if I can’t see past that”

 

“I don’t know Jughead,” Veronica’s voice is low and raspy with pain that she suspects doesn’t come from the bullet hole in her shoulder.  “I love you, I do, God, but my love, I’m so selfish with it”

 

“How can you say that,” Jughead’s voice is low and husky as if they’ve been talking this way, in these strained whispers, for a while and he needs to clear his throat, “after what you just did?”

 

“Exactly Jughead,” Veronica speaks through what sounds like the onset of tears. “I’d have taken that bullet today and bled out right in front of you. I'd have put you through that rather than go through it myself. I’m selfish Jughead, my love is so selfish, I just want you, I want you so much, but Betty, I can’t be-”

 

She’s cut off and Betty peeps around the door frame to see Jughead pressing his lips to Veronica’s, silencing her protests the only way he knows how. When they pull apart it’s slow, lingering, reluctant. “Please, Veronica,” he murmurs so softly she barely hears him, “Please be selfish.”

 

She draws away, creeps back a few steps, then returns with loud footsteps and a knock on the open door. “Hey”

 

They both jump guiltily and she feels exhausted by any version of the future she can imagine.

 

She can be the wedge between them. A barrier between two people she cannot now deny are truly, irrevocably and brokenly, in love. How tiring, she thinks, to watch them suffer their separation only to hurt her all over again when they inevitably fail. When a love strong enough to drive a girl into the path of a bullet will not be contained by loyalty and guilt.

 

Or, and she can actually consider this now in the light of how they came unquestioningly to her aid, she could step aside. Try with as much magnanimity as she can muster to, if not give them her blessing then at least remove her objection.

 

She could call him brother she thinks. Another evolution of her love for him, from childlike, to platonic, to romantic and eventually familial. It would be strange perhaps but she could pack away the memories of his skin in to a locked box inside her mind and throw away the key.

 

Perhaps she could even forgive Veronica, perhaps she could tell herself that Veronica did wrong but at least she did it for love. Perhaps.

 

“Hey Betts,” Jughead’s brow furrows with concern and Veronica tries to sit up, wincing in pain as she does so.

 

“Are you ok B?” Veronica asks worriedly.

 

“Not really, I mean my dad’s a serial killer and by tomorrow everyone will know.”

 

Jughead and Veronica share a fleeting concerned look and Veronica speaks for them both. “Tell us what you need B, anything at all, we’re here for you.”

 

 _We_ she thinks, without nearly as much animosity as she’d expected. Perhaps when tomorrow comes and the town knows her as a murderer’s daughter. When her mother inevitably spirals into some as yet unpredictable insanity, perhaps then she’ll need them. Perhaps as a _we,_ an _us_ , they can be there for her in a way they failed to be as individuals.

 

“Sure,” she nods. “Thanks guys”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a change of pace there let me know what you thought (i anticipate mixed reviews)


	15. To be forgiven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But I’m going to forgive you Jughead,” Betty nods decisively, her eyes on his, but her gaze slightly glassy as if turned inward. “You and Veronica”
> 
> “We don’t deserve it”
> 
> She shrugs and her focus snaps back to him with sharp intensity. “Maybe, maybe not. But I have to, Jughead, for me, for my own sanity. I can’t, I won’t, be like him”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> November, bloody November I last updated this. I am deeply shamed.
> 
> Honestly i got a bit stuck with the end and these other stories keep running about my head. Anyway i finally got it done having opened it pretty much daily for the last 3 months and written a line at a time. 
> 
> Hope it works. I actually felt i couldn't wrap everything up in this so theres a short Veronica POV epilogue still to come

Hermione and Hiram Lodge arrive in the awkward silence that settles over the three of them, pushing past him so they flank Veronica’s bed mixing English and Spanish in an outpouring of fear and relief, from Hermione, and barely contained rage, from Hiram.

 

“Who did this to you mija?” Veronica’s father asks and Jughead sees Betty stand abruptly, her body tensing with the need to flee.

 

Veronica notices too. “Jughead,” she says and his attention snaps away from Betty’s curling fists to Veronica’s perfectly schooled expression. She gives him a meaningful look. “You and Betty should go and get some rest.”

 

He wants more than anything to stay with her but there’s an order in her eyes that tells him that’s not an option. Still he tries, because he saw her shot tonight and for a brief, terrible, second he thought she was lost. Now he wants to cling to her like a frightened child clinging to their favourite plush toy. “Vero-”

 

“Go Jughead,” Veronica insists. “I have my mom and dad to look after me”

 

“She’s right young man,” Hiram steps between him and the girl in the bed. “We can take care of our daughter”

 

He steps to the side to look around the older man and Veronica frowns impatiently. “Go with Betty Jug,” she insists firmly. Then with a softening in her eyes and a small reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine”

 

He nods back, stamping down on his own need to try and shield her. He never doubted her strength. Even before he loved her he respected her, and if she says she’s fine he has to believe her and take care of the decidedly not fine friend at his side. The one with the pale trembling lips and blood under her finger nails.

 

He and Betty walk in heavy contemplative silence back to Elm Street. He doesn't ask if she’s ok. What would be the point? He just walks beside her, close but not too close, and hopes his presence can bring her some small comfort.

 

Arriving at Betty’s door they’re met by Alice Cooper dressed in a light plum coloured skirt suit, her hair and make-up immaculate and a briefcase in her hand.

 

“Mom,” Betty looks questioningly at her mother her expression a mixture of disbelief and a sort of bracing as she readies herself for whatever as yet unknown insanity they’re about to witness. “Where are you going?”

 

“To the register,” Alice answers as if it were obvious. “This story needs to go to print tonight”

 

“You’re writing this?” Betty’s eyes widen in disbelief and she presses a hand to her temple before gesturing heavenwards with it. “God, mom, in the register?”

 

“Of course,” Alice gives Betty that impatient look he always hated. The one that seems to say ‘I can’t believe how slow you are’ and pulls her car keys from her bag. “Betty, in the morning the rumours are going to rampant. I am taking control of this situation.”

 

“But-“

 

“We have nothing to be ashamed of, Elizabeth,” Alice straightens her jacket decisively. “Which is why we will hold our heads up high. You will go to school and I will write about the capture of a serial killer in _my_ paper”

 

Betty shakes her head and opens her mouth but her mother gives her no opportunity to speak. “I’ll be home very late. Chic’s going to take Polly’s room. Jughead you can take the couch”

 

Betty gawps at her mother, clearly as much a victim of Alice Cooper induced whiplash as he feels right now. “You want Jughead to sleep here?” Betty ask incredulously.

 

“Well it’s not like I have to worry about him sneaking into you room anymore is it?”

 

“Mom,” Betty rolls her eyes so hard they’re almost entirely white at one point. “Seriously?”

 

Alice gives her daughter an impatient look and heads for her car. “Look after Betty Jughead,” she calls back as she opens the door. “It’s really the least you can do, don’t you think?”

 

Being the direct focus of Alice’s attention shouldn’t make him squirm like this anymore, not after everything he’s faced.  “Yes Mrs Cooper”

 

“I think I’ll be going back to Smith actually Jughead”

 

“That is,” he pauses groping for a word. “Understandable”

 

Betty makes eye contact after her mother leaves and he gives her what he hopes is a supportive look. She shakes her head and with an eye roll lets him know that she’s ok. That her mother’s reaction is no worse nor better than she’d expected.

 

“You ok?” he asks once they’re inside. “Hungry? I could head to the kitchen and see what the freezer will yield”

 

“Actually, yeah, I’m starving. Thanks, Juggie”

 

The nickname makes his heart feel at once heavy with guilt and a little lighter with a spark of hope that she will one day forgive him. He makes her camomile tea and finds a frozen pizza that he pops in the oven.

 

“Hey,”

 

Looking over his shoulder he sees his brother wander into the kitchen. “Hey, how’s it going?”

 

“I was just thinking,” Chic smirks, black humour dancing in his eyes. “At least I didn’t miss out on a perfect family huh?”

 

Jughead snorts out a laugh. “You did not. On the up side I guess dad won’t seem like such a bad guy by comparison”

 

Chic lifts an eyebrow in agreement and opens the fridge, pulling out a can of soda and leaning against the counter as he opens it. “How ‘bout you dude? How’s your girl?”

 

“Veronica’s fine. Just a flesh wound. Her parents took her home,” he picks at a peeling strip of skin along his nail. “Not sure about her being my girl though”

 

“She took a bullet for you man,” Chic shakes his head. “If she’s not your girl she fucking should be.”

 

Succinct as ever Chic turns and heads back upstairs to Polly’s room, leaving him with the echo of his own feelings in the air. _She fucking should be_

 

He sits beside Betty long after their pizza is finished. Neither speak. All the words of comfort that run through his head he dismisses immediately. It is not after all going to be ok for Betty and her family any time soon.

 

“Jughead,” it’s Betty who eventually breaks the heavy silence. “Can we talk about you and Veronica”

 

His throat immediately feels like it’s closing up and his heart hammers a dread-filled rhythm low in his chest as he waits for whatever she’s about to say.

 

“I’m not going to ask why you did it?” She continues and he wonders if she’s distracted herself all evening by planning what she’s going to say about this stupid, painful, trivial thing, rather than letting her mind drift to the now inescapable truth that her father is a serial killer. “I doubt you could even give me a reason,” she’s right he thinks as she pauses, right and wrong. On one level no there’s no reason, no justification, he can give for cheating on her, but on another it couldn’t be simpler, perhaps she knows that too as she continues. “Even if you could I really wouldn’t want to hear it”

 

“Betty-“

 

“But I’m going to forgive you Jughead,” Betty nods decisively, her eyes on his, but her gaze slightly glassy as if turned inward. “You and Veronica”

 

He wants her forgiveness, perhaps more for Veronica than for himself, but he can’t just accept that it could possibly be this easy. “We don’t deserve it”

 

She shrugs and her focus snaps back to him with sharp intensity. “Maybe, maybe not. But I have to, Jughead, for me, for my own sanity. I can’t, I won’t, be like him”

 

“Betty,” he shakes his head, chiding her with his tone for entertaining such a ridiculous notion. “You could never be”

 

“Couldn’t I?” Her eyes are wide and searching and her words come in the staccato rhythm of rising panic. “I have been so angry Jughead, with both of you. This darkness, _his_ darkness. I feel like. Like I can’t control it, like it’s consuming me, turning me into a monster”

 

“Hey, hey, look at me” he grasps her shoulders and she focuses reluctantly on his face. “It’s not, and you aren’t. Betty you think you have his darkness, hey, maybe you do, I don’t know. What I do know is that even if you do it never stopped you being the best person I know”

 

“Jughead,” she croaks, her tear-filled eyes imploring him to be right.

 

“You’re a good person Betty,” he assures her his own voice cracking over the words.  “Please believe that”

 

Betty falls asleep on the sofa a little later and he covers her in a soft blanket and sits in the armchair in the low lamp light and lets his thoughts turn to Veronica. _If she’s not your girl she fucking should be. Yes,_ he thinks almost sulkily she fucking should be. Yet in the hospital earlier when he’d sat at her bedside, eyes drawn over and over again away from her face to the clean white dressing on her shoulder, she’d given no indication that she’d changed her mind, that she was ready to put aside her guilt and just be his.

 

But when he’d silenced her ludicrous protests with a kiss her whole body had trembled and her mouth had followed his as he’d reluctantly pulled away. A lingering, sighing, sadness on her breath,

 

Her phone goes straight to voicemail and his texts go unanswered. By midnight he’s virtually crawling up the walls.

 

He walks across town to the Pembrooke and stares up at the darkened windows of the penthouse. The building is tall and imposing, a fortress he has no hope of scaling. His over tired brain tells him the building is a metaphor for her heart, far above him, bastioned and obscured. He shakes his head at his own melodrama and tries her phone one last time before heading back to Elm Street in defeat and trying to get comfortable in the armchair.

 

At some point in the early hours he wakes to the sound of Betty’s soft sobs and moves to the couch to take her in his arms as she cries. He remembers with heart wrenching clarity how he’d felt the night he’d heard his own father had confessed to murder. How much worse this must be for Betty, not simply because FP's guilt was in doubt, or because of the simple mathematics of the crimes. No, this must be worse because while he was already disillusioned with his father Betty had still believed in hers.

 

The morning finds them still crammed together on the couch, a warm sense of comfort ghosting over his neck with each of her sleeping breaths. He’d do anything, he thinks as he carefully shifts a little to get more comfortable, to save Betty from pain. He’d face a serial killer every second Sunday of the month for the rest of his life if Betty needed him too. He’d move heaven and earth to keep her safe, to make her happy.

 

The only thing he wouldn’t do - won’t do, didn’t do - no matter how much pain it causes her or how hard Veronica fights him on it, is give up Veronica.

 

“Thanks for last night,” Betty murmurs and he looks down to see her eyes have opened. They’re red rimmed and tired but somehow a little clearer that the night before. She’s cried for her father and now she’s ready to straighten that steel backbone she undoubtedly gets from her mother and move forward.

 

“Anytime Betts,” he pulls her back into his chest and kisses the tousled hair on the crown of her head with all the affection of a lifetime of friendship. “Anytime”

 

“What the fuck? Seriously dude what the hell is wrong with you?” Archie is somehow in the living-room, letterman jacket on his shoulders and a furious expression on his face. It takes Jughead a moment to understand what Archie is so angry about before he realises that his friend didn’t get in till late last night from his trip away with Susanna. Archie has no idea what happened over the last 24 hours. All he sees is Betty wrapped in Jughead’s arms just a week after he fucked around on her with her best friend.

 

What kind of upside-down-verse has he somehow created where Archie would imagine that he, of all people, is bouncing back and forth between women like some kind of low rent Casanova. “Calm down Archie, this is not what you’re thinking”

 

“Betty?”

 

“Oh god Arch, there’s so much, I don’t even know where to start” Betty clenches her hands in her lap and he immediately steps in to help her.

 

“Betts,” he glances at her hands and she consciously uncurls them. “Why don’t you take a quick shower, I can fill Archie in”

 

Relief washes visibly over the blonde who nods her thanks and scurries away leaving him to turn to Archie, take a deep breath, and tell the tale of the unmasking of the real black hood.

 

Archie responds just as Jughead knew he would. With bone crushing hugs all round as he processes, in the span of a few minutes, that he could have lost one or both of them and that he didn’t.

 

“And your mom is seriously making you go to school today?” he asks Betty who's answering nod is slow and defeated.

 

“You know my mom, she’s-”

 

“Crazy,” Jughead supplies which makes Betty’s lips twitch, hinting at an exhausted, rueful, amusement.

 

“Exactly”

 

“It’ll be ok Betty,” Archie assures her. ”Jug and I won’t leave your side, I promise”

 

The blonde looks between them, eyes grateful despite the shadows beneath them and the worry etched at their corners. “Thank you”

 

Later, after school, Jughead glances awkwardly over his shoulder as he knocks on the Lodge penthouse door, grateful that Veronica had long since given him the code to electronic lock on the back entrance to the building that allowed him to sneak past Andre and up the narrow hidden staircase to the top floor.

 

Hiram Lodge answers, his genial expression souring at the sight of the boy at his door. “Jughead” he greets coolly.

 

“Mr Lodge,” he tries to keep his natural antipathy for the mobster out of his voice. Provoking Hiram will only keep him away from the girl inside. “I was hoping to talk to Veronica”

 

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Hiram says his voice neutral. “Veronica is resting”

 

“Right, ok,” he shuffles on the spot unwilling to leave without at least a glimpse of her. “Could you let her know I stopped by, or maybe I could come back?”

 

“Jughead,” Mr Lodge returns more sharply. “You’re a smart young man and you have many admiral qualities. Qualities that my daughter has clearly come to appreciate. I, however, have not”

 

The barbed rejoiner on his tongue threatens the back of his teeth and he presses his lips together to keep it inside. “Mr Lodg-”

 

“You are impulsive," Hiram continues in a low dangerous voice. "You are stubborn and reckless in the pursuit of what you consider justice. And that makes you dangerous, dangerous to my business and to my daughter.”

 

“I would never hurt Ver-”

 

“It’s time for you to go Mr Jones,” Hiram interrupts, his voice low and steely like the sharpening of a blade. “I will not allow my daughter to-”

 

“Allow?” Veronica’s voice cuts through her fathers hissed threats. “Seriously daddy, allow?”

 

“Mija, you should rest”

 

“I’m not tired daddy,“ Veronica dares her father to try and control her. Even in her silk pyjamas, looking tinier than usual without her heels, she’s somehow imposing.  Magnificent, he thinks. “Besides I need to catch up with school. Jughead brought notes”

 

“Er, yeah,” Jughead nods unconvincingly. “Notes. From Betty”

 

Veronica gives her father a challengingly looks as she leans past him to take Jughead’s hand and drag him into the penthouse. “We’re going to study in my room”

 

“Mija” Hiram begins with a warning tone but his wife cuts him off quickly.

 

“Ok Veronica,” Hermione places a hand regally on her husband's shoulder and some silent communication passes between them. “Door open”

 

“Sure”

 

Veronica leaves the door only fractionally ajar and walks past him to sit on her bed. “Hey,” she greets softly, her gaze trailing over his body as if assessing his state of health. “How is, everything out there?”

 

“Not great. Mrs Cooper made Betty go to school today”

 

“Oh my god, that woman, I swear.” Veronica takes a deep breath, exhaling her anger at Alice in a steady stream. “How was it?”

 

“Honestly better than expected. Cheryl, of all people, stepped in at the first sign of trouble”

 

_They’re navigating the corridors on the way to home room - with Betty sandwiched between them and Archie talking loudly to drown out the whispers from their classmates - when Chuck Clayton appears, blocking their path._

_The jock’s eyes hard with victorious malice and his voice loud and provoking. “So, psychosis really does run in the family then Cooper”_

_“Fuck off Chuck,” Archie snaps and Jughead tucks Betty in behind his back and glares at Chuck threateningly, letting every ounce of Southside darkness seep into his gaze. But Archie’s brawn and the latent violence in Jughead’s eyes do nothing to deter Chuck from his long-awaited revenge._

_“You act loyal, Andrews,” Chuck sneers. “But the truth is you’d both rather fuck that stuck up Lodge slut than this crazy bitch.”_

_Jughead grinds his teeth together so hard that he feels like the enamel might actually crack and fingers the cool handle of the flick knife deep in the pocket of his leather jacket. He obviously, well probably, won’t stab Chuck on school property, but one more insult for either Betty or Veronica and he may well press the blade against the Jock’s throat in the hope that the spoilt, privileged, bastard will actually piss himself._

_A small crowd gathers, gleefully watching the scene and he feels Betty shrinking in on herself at his side. He wraps a protective arm around her shoulders and snarls at Chuck. “Back off”_

_“You should sleep with one eye open Jughead. Cooper almost boiled me alive for a little locker room banter. What do you reckon the punishment is for screwing her best friend?”_

_“Enough you drooling Neanderthal,” Cheryl arrives in typically dramatic style with a flick of her long hair over her shoulder as she poses with her weight over one hip to draw attention to the elegant line of her legs. “Yet again it's my dear cousin who’s responsible for bringing the murderous lunatics with whom we’re unfortunate enough to share blood to justice and making this Texarkana nightmare town a safer place.”_

_Cheryl purses her sticky crimson lips and dismisses the crowd with an elegant wave of her hand. “Shoo plebeians,” she barks and the hallway empties, leaving only Chuck who the redhead moves towards with a predatory smirk. “Don’t defy me Chuck,” she tells him, laying her long taloned fingers on his chest. “Your place on the team’s hanging by a thread. One accusation, no matter how unfounded, would end you.”_

_Chuck gives her a poisonous look but turns and stalks off leaving Cheryl to turn to them with a bright fake smile. “T.T.F.N losers.”_

_Then she’s gone and Jughead grumbles, just to break the tension, “does this mean I have to stop hating her? Because honestly that’s above and beyond”_

_Betty gives him a weak smile that echoes of that old indulgence she always showed him. “Maybe tone it down to a violent dislike?”_

_He rolls his eyes. “I’ll go to mistrustful abhorrence and not an inch farther,” he declares seriously and is rewarded with a genuine flicker of amusement in her eyes._

“You should talk to Betty,” he tells Veronica softly. “She’s ready to talk”

 

Veronica nods pensively. “Thanks, I will”

 

“And me?” he asks. Pushing her now, greedy and impatient for her. “Will you talk to me? Will you listen to me?”

 

She sighs. “Jughead”

 

“I’m not giving up V,” his hands come to grasp hers. Gathering them up from where they lie on her lap and drawing them to his chest. “I can’t”

 

She bites her lip. He can see she’s wavering. Her resolve to keep them apart faltering under the weight of all they’ve been through.

 

“Please, Veronica,” he urges. “Let me say it once”

 

Her lips part in a breathy “ok” which sets his heart off, thundering in his chest and filling his ears with the roar of his blood.

 

 _Don’t fuck it up,_ he orders himself as he inhales a deep steadying breath. He pushes her hair from her face unnecessarily. Just to buy time, just to touch her, just because they do it on the tv.

 

“Everyone loved you when you arrived you know? Betty and Archie and Kevin they thought you were amazing,” he pauses and his mouth quirks at the corner. “I thought you were a fucking nightmare”

 

Dark velvet eyes go wide with shock and her perfect mouth falls open, as if she’s surprised, as if she didn’t know that already.

 

“I was never dazzled by you Veronica,” he wants to just tell her. Wield his _I love you_ like a sledge hammer to smash through her reservations. But this isn’t a moment for blunt force. He wants her to understand not only that he loves her but why. How, in the end, she left him no choice. “I wasn't intimidated or impressed. I saw the worst of what you presented. I saw a conceited, facile, privileged snob. I saw intolerance and presumption and fuck everything I hated.”

 

Her eyes flash with hurt and rising anger and he lays a hand on her cheek to still her, calming the brewing storm with a gentle brush of his thumb across her high cheekbone.

 

“But you, God V, you defied all my expectations. One by one you decimated every prejudice until I couldn’t help but respect you, grudgingly admittedly at first, then almost fondly. I started to see how strong and smart you were. How committed you are to the people you care about and yeah I respected you but you still seemed so hard, so perfectly put together, I never could have seen past that until you got drunk and showed me how much you hurt, how desperate and human and lost, you could be, and I stopped seeing  _Veronica Lodge_ and started seeing you”

 

He’s fucking this up he thinks with rising panic, this his shot to convince her, to make her take a chance on them. But he’s getting it wrong, her eyes are guarded and wary and he’s knocking her down when he wants to lift her up. He’s just trying to make her understand that he can be so much more than the acolytes that have worshipped her before. That all their admiration has been for all the parts of her that don’t matter, that he, only he, sees the imperfect truth beneath and loves her for it.

 

“And what I saw underneath blew my mind. How you tried, how fucking hard you worked, even when your heart was breaking, to be good, to make the people around you happy. We screwed up Veronica I know that, but you always tried, way harder than me, to be good and I loved you for it.”

 

“Jughead”

 

“Please Veronica,” he’s not above begging. Not when it comes to her. “Can’t that be enough?”

 

She tilts her head and her eyes seem to settle into a deep searching brown. “Can it?”

 

“I love you,” he tells her solemnly thinking how his speeches mean nothing. How, in the end, there is only this.

 

She pulls her hands from his, but he feels her reluctance in the way they linger lightly against his as she starts to protest. “Jug-”

 

“I love you,” he cuts off whatever she’s going to say and her eyes flash with an annoyance that’s laced with something adoring. Hope surges in his chest as she tries to speak again.

 

“Listen I-”

 

“I love you,” he repeats and she’s huffs in affectionate irritation. It feels like a cloud suddenly lifts.

 

“All right, all right, stop. I get it,” her lips quirk in reluctant amusement as if tweaked by an invisible wire.

 

“I lo-”

 

“Oh my god shush” she snaps but her tone is warm and her fingers are reaching for his again. “Fine. I love you too”

 

He flops back dramatically on her bed. “Oh, thank god.”

 

She lies down elegantly alongside him and drops her head to look at where their hands lie joined in the space between them, tangled like vines on the satin comforted.

 

“Can we work?” she asks after a few long moments as she watches her thumb move over the back of his hand. “On paper we don’t work Jughead.”

 

He nods in acknowledgement, she isn’t wrong. They’re the very definition of and odd couple. But he doesn’t have to look far to see perfect matches, two of a kind couples, that have brought each other nothing but misery. Outside Veronica’s bedroom door Hermione and Hiram Lodge exist in co-dependent wickedness, enabling the very worst in one another over and over again. The very definition of the perfect couple, high school sweethearts turned cookie cutter parents, the Coopers have imploded spectacularly this year and, closer still to home, Gladys and FP Jones ended up too much two of a kind to exist together not even in the same home but in the same town.

 

“You know,” he tilts her head with his free hand and loses his thoughts in the quicksand of her beauty. “I think we’ll work just fine.”

 

She crosses the space between them and kisses him with studied gentleness. It’s slow and searching and unlike any kiss they’ve shared before. The ever-present passion between them circles patiently on the outskirts of this kiss, confident it’s time will come, and in its absence, he feels the true depth of her love for him against his mouth.

 

“Yeah,” she murmurs when they part, their mouths slightly open and breath mingling together between them. “You might be right there Jughead Jones.”

 

“Is that a yes?” he asks softly. “Can we try?”

 

“Oh torombolo,” she smirks but its playful and loving and he can’t think of a single expression he likes better on her face. “Veronica Lodge doesn’t try, she simply succeeds”

 

“Good to know I’m on a winning team,” he’s grinning at her now. A big stupid goofy grin like some kind of village simpleton that he can’t even make himself try to suppress. “I love you”

 

Her finger trails down his cheek as she leans in and her ‘I love you’ fans across his mouth right before she kisses him and seals their pact. To, against the odds and against all expectations, try to do the simplest most difficult thing in the world and love each other.

 

 


	16. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You look amazing V,” Betty gushes as she stands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
> 
> “Oh god, me neither,” she looks at herself in the mirror, her hands coming to lie on her own stomach. “I think I’m gonna throw up.” 
> 
> “You’ll be fine,” Betty assures her with a laugh. “But we should get going because if you keep Jughead waiting he will actually puke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished. Oh me, oh my, it's done. 
> 
> A huge thanks to everyone who stuck with this story (even when i went awol for a while). Big thanks to the regular reviewers and all the kudos heart tickers, you make writing my day every time.
> 
> Warning this chapter contains graphic and gratuitous fluff, enter at your own risk.

**Veronica's POV**

 

They don’t work. On so many levels, Veronica thinks, they don’t work.

 

They’re alike in all the wrong ways - argumentative, opinionated, stubborn - and different in all the ways that should hold them together. They have, after all, little in common beyond an encyclopaedic knowledge of classic cinema and a love of hearing themselves talk.

 

It doesn’t help, she knows, that they keep their relationship mostly hidden. Neither of them is comfortable showing affection in front of Betty and Archie and by the time they’re alone they’ve usually irritated each other to the point where they’re glowering and snapping at each other.

 

They don’t work and yet she thinks as he buries his hand in her hair and pulls her head roughly to the side they work perfectly. She hisses as he nips her collar bone. “Fuck I missed you last night”

 

“Me too, shit V, spread your legs baby I need you”

 

She does as he tells her. She loves him like this, needy and commanding. A perfect mix of desperation and demand.

 

“Good girl,” he doesn’t even take her panties off. He pulls them aside and unzips his fly so he can push roughly into her knowing she’ll be wet and ready for him, she always is. “Fuck V, Christ you’re so perfect”

 

“Jug,” she whines impatiently urging him to move with a jerk of her hips. They’ll make love later she knows. Later he’ll move inside her with deep steady strokes as she undulates like a swelling ocean beneath him. He’ll kiss her deep and gentle on the mouth or lay his forehead on hers and lose himself in her eyes. But, not yet. First, he’ll fuck her like it’s been two years rather than two days since he was last inside her. He’ll bruise her breasts with his mouth and her thighs with his fingertips as he ploughs into her with love and curses on his lips.

 

Later his head will lie pillowed on her chest, her fingers threading through his hair, as they talk about the future. Spinning stories of how their lives will be beyond Riverdale. Always they plan to be together despite the bickering. Despite the differences that in daylight sometimes feel irreconcilable yet at night fade away to nothing.

 

But for now, she’ll cling to his shoulders as he presses her back against the wall, wrap her legs around his waist and urge him on with guttural moans of pleasure. A ‘yes, yes, yes’ of need that she still can’t believe that he, of all people, creates within her. Turning, in these moments at least, the indomitable Veronica Lodge into a needy, grasping, suppliant; desperate and begging for him.

 

“No” she wails when he pulls out of her. “Jug please”

 

“It’s ok baby,” he spins her around and pushes into her from behind, one hand on her shoulder pressing her face against the cool smooth wall, the other on her hip to steady her. “I got you.”

 

Her eyes roll back and she lets out an unladylike grunt of pleasure as he pounds into he. The noises he’s making are as base, as animalistic, as her own. But, he intersperses his groans with growls of her names, with praise for her body, and with love. Even in these moments of raw physical desire there’s love. On his lips, in his bruising fingers,  gasped into the charged air between them.

 

“Veronica,” he growls when they’re both teetering on the precipice of release. It’s a demand. An order she’s happy to obey.

 

“I love you,” she manages to force the words he wants to hear out between her gasping breathes. “Jug, I love you”

 

“Fuck,” his hips jerk erratically in response as he comes with his own, “I love you,” tumbling out to tip her over the edge with him.

 

The next day she wears a scarf to hide her hickeys and at lunch glances awkwardly at the free seat beside him before choosing a place next to Kevin. The space between them in the daylight, with Betty and Archie nearby, feels like a chasm. She’s terrified that they won’t be able to hold on. That the closeness of their nights won’t be enough.

 

Their eyes meet and quickly disengage, running skittishly away from each other.

 

It’s Betty that speaks. “Ok, this is ridiculous,” she says and she sounds tired. As worn out by a month of this pretence as they are. “Seriously how long is this going to go on? Will you not kiss the bride some day because the maid of honour won’t like it?”

 

Betty gives her a pointed look as in one irritated statement her friend offers her all the blessing she can. Offers a promise of friendship and acceptance whatever the future brings for her and Jughead. “Thanks B,” her chest swells with gratitude and she chokes a little on her reply.

 

There’s a tense moment and its Archie that breaks it. “Betty that’s kinda presumptions. Maybe Veronica will want a man of honour.” He does a pick me gesture that makes them all laugh.

 

“It’s true Betts.” Jughead points his spoon at Betty. “This is old fashioned thinking. Who’ll be best woman?”

 

Betty laughs and throws a carrot stick at Jughead. “Fine, whatever gender-neutral roles you guys dish out. The point stands”

 

Veronica thinks of that day years later. The day that marked a turning point for them. The weight of secrecy lifted from them and in the daylight she found they actually worked pretty well. Because when he annoyed her too much he’d lean across and poke at her ribs until she’d forgive him. Or when he was spiralling into irritation or anxiety she’d lay her hand on his leg and her head on his shoulder and feel him calm beneath her touch. Small things that made all the difference.

 

She thinks of Archie’s silly joke as she watches Betty squat down in front of Rebecca Cooper and fix the flowers in her hair. That was what clinched it in the end, their roles. The best mistake Betty Cooper ever made and how adorable she looks in her peach satin dress, a miniature, poofier, version of her mother’s elegant satin gown.

 

Archie, she thinks, will probably pull off the three-piece suit better than Betty would have anyway. Although whether she trusts him as completely to get Jughead here on time as she might have done Betty is less certain.

 

“You look amazing V,” Betty gushes as she stands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

 

“Oh god, me neither,” she looks at herself in the mirror, her hands coming to lie on her own stomach. “I think I’m gonna throw up”

 

“You’ll be fine,” Betty assures her with a laugh. “But we should get going because if you keep Jughead waiting he will actually puke”

 

Betty’s probably right. She knows this isn’t what Jughead would really want. The ever-growing guest list, the oh so public flower adorned arbour in the park, the decadent reception. He’s doing this because he wants to of course. But, he’s doing it this way because it’s what she wants and over the years he’s made an art of giving her what she wants whether she asks for it or not.

 

“We could do it at city hall,” she’d offered after he’d given her the elegant diamond ring she still doesn’t believe, despite all their protests, that Betty didn’t help him pick out. “I don’t care if it’s just you and me and witnesses off the street”

 

She’d meant it, she truly had. But he’d known that this was what she really wanted and he’d gone to her father for his blessing and triggered the chain of events that would lead them to this day. To her father half proudly, half reluctantly, taking her arm to walk her down the decadently decorated aisle he paid for towards the black-haired boy she once screwed out of nothing more than spite. The boy who became the man she’s about to promise the rest of her life to.

 

Archie’s speech is high calorie content sentimentality and gentle teasing humour that makes the guests laugh and leaves them with damp eyes. Her father compliments her for her strength beauty and intelligence and welcomes Jughead to the family in a tone only those closest to him would recognise as grudging. Her husband bumps her knee with his under the table like they’re sharing a joke back in high school and she side eyes him with scolding affection.

 

Jughead rattles off the list of thanks she’d written down for him before looking briefly down into her eyes and turning to address their guests. “My wife,” he pauses for the cheer that Archie initiates at the word and turns his smile on her as they both bask in their new status for a moment. “My wife once told me, back in high school when she’d still had the unnerving habit of talking about herself in the third person,” another pause while those who knew them back then laugh at the memory and she turns to a giggling Betty and rolls her eyes. “That Veronica Lodge does not try, she just succeeds. I can tell you ladies and gentleman that that was, and remains, a lie. Veronica tries harder than anyone I’ve ever met. In work, in friendships, and perhaps most of all in love, Veronica has always been an unstoppable force of nature. A tidal wave of energy and determination that I’ve been more than happy to let sweep me a long. That she would want to keep trying with me for the rest of our lives baffles and amazes me. “

 

He turns to looks into her eyes again. “Veronica was always out of my league-“

 

A few tipsy voices in the crowd holler in agreement and Jughead bears the interruption with a magnanimous grin. “Yeah, yeah. Fine, let me just toast her then,” he turns to her and lifts his glass. “To my wonderful, radiant, unsustainably expensive, beautiful wife. To Veronica Jones”

 

The room lifts their glasses with an echo as Jughead sits beside her and drops his head in close to hers to hear her indignant whisper. “Expensive Jug? Really?”

 

He grins one of those goofy little grins of his and shrugs unrepentantly. “I love you Mrs Jones”

 

“You know those words aren’t actually a get out of jail free card, right?” she whispers with faux annoyance.

 

He lifts and eyebrow and she rolls her eyes but leans in anyway in invitation. “Ok maybe they are, but only for today.”

 

“Noted,” He kisses her softly, his lips brushing light and brief over hers.

 

“Mr Jones,” she says against his mouth as he pulls fractionally away. “I love you too”

 

She sinks into his side and thinks about how things have a way of turning out exactly as they should and never as you’d predict. The cheerleader and the loner, turned mafia princess and gang leader, turned struggling students, turned successful - her and her high paying PR job - and respected - him with his junior lecturer position and first book in print – adults. Today, finally, turned husband and wife.

 

They make love that night with a playfulness they rarely shared in those first few years together despite their youth. When sex had always been either wildly passionate or deeply intense. They know better now, they know how to laugh when they make love how to tease and even how to be lazy. “I like the view,” he’ll claim sometimes when he rolls them so she’s above him and he can lay back with his hands on her hips and grin at her as she scolds him. “You just want me to do the work.”

 

They call each other Mr and Mrs Jones as they tumble together in a tangle of kisses and the skirts of her dress. “Where the fuck are you?” he complains as he lifts petticoat after petticoat.  “Take this off”

 

“Oh no,” she rolls on her back and spreads her legs loving the glint in his eye at the invitation. “This dress cost three thousand dollars. I’m getting my money’s worth”

 

“Ah ha,” finally he finds her thighs and snaps her garter belt. “Got you! Wait, three thousand dollars?”

 

She kisses him to shut him up but when she pushes him on his back and straddles him her dress bunches up around her in voluminous satin waves so high that she can barely see him and she has to admit defeat and slip it off. Her five-hundred-dollar lingerie – and no she doesn’t admit they cost that much to him – he doesn’t seem to have a problem with her leaving on.

 

In the dark later, both sleepy from the champagne they’ve drunk and the hours they’ve spent in bed together enjoying be husband and wife, he tells her they’ve made it. Survived Riverdale and got out. Made it out into the world and the life they’d always talked about when they were kids.

 

“We have torombolo,” she agrees. “Together. Just like we always said”

 

He snuggles into her, laying his head on her breasts the way he used to and she strokes his hair. “Goodnight Jug”

 

“Goodnight,” me mumbles sleepily into her skin. “Mrs Jones”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you and good night!
> 
> Oooh and soon there will be a Jeronica post season 2 fic coming( unless that brief flash of Hermione straightening Jughead's collar in the 3x11 promo turns me into a Jermione shipper which is actually worryingly possible :-P )
> 
> Anyhooooo preview time.....  
>  
> 
> _Then suddenly there’s whooshing sensation and he’s looking at his mother staring vacant eyed at his grandparents’ chintzy collection of porcelain figurines and hugging herself tightly. No tears he notices. Not really a surprise, but a kick in the gut all the same._
> 
>  
> 
> _Another whoosh and it’s the Whyte Wyrm. Toni in Cheryl’s arms crying softly. Sweetpea raging, demanding vengeance, blood on his knuckles and on the wall. “If the boss dies I’ll burn them all I fucking swear it”_
> 
>  
> 
> _Whoosh, Fred Andrews splashing water on his weathered face in a hospital bathroom, looking exhausted and hopeless._
> 
>  
> 
> _Whoosh, Alice Cooper pacing anxiously, phone in hand._
> 
>  
> 
> _Whoosh, Veronica in Archie’s bedroom looking down at the flannel shirt he left there few days ago. She’s stroking the fabric, watching the motion of her own fingers with dry unseeing eyes. No tears here either he thinks wryly._
> 
>  
> 
> _He’s ready for the next whoosh - though this kaleidoscope of grief must be ending soon, he doesn’t after all have that many friends - when her fingers grasp the shirt and in one jerky graceless movement she sinks to her knees and brings it to her face._
> 
>  
> 
> _She makes a noise like an animal in pain, an agonised wail that breaks like a splash of dirty water against the silence of the house. Her whole body convulses and tears come in deep wracking sobs as she desperately pulls in choking gasps of air that barely seem enough to sustain her weeping let alone the chant of “No. No. No,” she starts up as she clings to his shirt and rocks back and forth on her knees._
> 
>  
> 
> _He can’t understand this outpouring of grief nor the broken pleading prayers that follow. In and out of Spanish as her body doubles up on itself. “Santa María, Madre de Dios, God please, please don’t take him. Oh god, not Jughead please. Prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell'ora della nostra more”_  
> 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope anyone who didn't see this already on FF.net liked it. Drop me a comment if the spirit moves you

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [spent last night dragging the lake for the corpses of my past mistakes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582844) by [Krewlak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krewlak/pseuds/Krewlak)




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